THE  PROBLEM   OF  CHRISTIANITY 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURES   DELIVERED  AT  THE   LOWELL 
INSTITUTE  IN  BOSTON,  AND  AT  MAN- 
CHESTER   COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


BT 

JOSIAH   ROYCE 

D.Sc.  (University  of  Oxford) 

PROFESSOR    OF    THE    HISTORY    OF    PHILOSOPHY 
IN   HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 


VOLUME  I 
THE  CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE   OF  LIFE 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1914 

AU  right*  reserved 


COPTBIOHT,   1918, 

BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  May,  1913.    Reprinted 
April,  1914. 


Xorfaaooti 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.8JL 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 

I   GRATEFULLY   DEDICATE 
THIS  BOOK 


PREFACE 

present  book  is  the  result  of  studies 
whose  first  outcome  appeared,  in  1908, 
in  my  "Philosophy  of  Loyalty."  Since  then, 
two  volumes  of  my  collected  philosophical 
essays  have  dealt,  in  part,  with  the  same 
problems  as  those  which  "The  Philosophy  of 
Loyalty"  discussed.  Of  these  two  latter 
volumes,  one  is  entitled  "William  James  and 
other  Essays  on  the  Philosophy  of  Life" ; 
and  contains,  amongst  other  theses,  the 
assertion  that  the  "spirit  of  loyalty"  is  able 
to  supply  us  not  only  with  a  "  philosophy  of 
life,"  but  with  a  religion  which  is  "free  from 
superstition"  and  which  is  in  harmony  with 
a  genuinely  rational  view  of  the  world.  In 
1912  were  published,  by  the  Scribners  in  New 
York,  the  "Bross  Lectures,"  which  I  had 
delivered,  in  the  autumn  of  1911,  at  Lake 
Forest  University,  Illinois,  on  "The  Sources 
of  Religious  Insight."  One  of  these  "Bross 
Lectures"  was  entitled  "The  Religion  of 

vii 


PREFACE 

Loyalty" ;  and  the  volume  in  question  con- 
tained the  promise  that,  in  a  future  discus- 
sion, I  would,  if  possible,  attempt  to  "apply 
the  principles"  there  laid  down  to  the  special 
case  of  Christianity.  The  present  work  re- 
deems that  promise  according  to  the  best  of 

my  ability. 

I 

The  task  of  these  two  volumes  is  defined 
in  the  opening  lecture  of  the  first  volume. 
The  main  results  are  carefully  summed  up  in 
Lectures  XV  and  XVI,  at  the  close  of  the 
second  volume.  This  book  can  be  under- 
stood without  any  previous  reading  of  my 
"Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  and  without  any 
acquaintance  with  my  "Bross  Lectures." 
Yet  in  case  my  reader  finds  himself  totally 
at  variance  with  the  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity here  expounded,  he  should  not  finally 
condemn  my  book  without  taking  the  trouble 
to  compare  its  principal  theses  with  those 
which  my  various  preliminary  studies  of 
"loyalty,"  and  of  the  religion  of  loyalty, 
contain. 

In    brief,   since   1908,   my   "philosophy  of 


PREFACE 

loyalty "  has  been  growing.  Its  successive 
expressions,  as  I  believe,  form  a  consistent 
body  of  ethical  as  well  as  of  religious  opinion 
and  teaching,  verifiable,  in  its  main  out- 
lines, in  terms  of  human  experience,  and 
capable  of  furnishing  a  foundation  for  a  de- 
fensible form  of  metaphysical  idealism.  But 
the  depth  and  vitality  of  the  ideal  of  loyalty 
have  become  better  known  to  me  as  I  have 
gone  on  with  my  work.  Each  of  my  efforts 
to  express  what  I  have  found  in  the  course 
of  my  study  of  what  loyalty  means  has  con- 
tained, as  I  believe,  some  new  results.  My 
efforts  to  grasp  and  to  expound  the  "religion 
of  loyalty"  have  at  length  led  me,  in  this 
book,  to  views  concerning  the  essence  of 
Christianity  such  that,  if  they  have  any 
truth,  they  need  to  be  carefully  considered. 
For  they  are,  in  certain  essential  respects, 
novel  views ;  and  they  concern  the  central 
life-problems  of  all  of  us. 

II 

What  these  relatively  novel  opinions  are, 
the  reader  may,  if  he  chooses,  discover  for 

be 


PREFACE 

himself.  If  he  is  minded  to  undertake  the 
task,  he  will  be  aided  by  beginning  with  the 
"Introduction,"  which  immediately  follows 
the  "Table  of  Contents"  in  the  first  volume 
of  this  book.  This  introduction  contains 
an  outline  of  the  lectures,  —  an  outline  which 
was  used,  by  my  audience,  when  the  text  of 
this  discussion  was  read  at  Manchester  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  between  January  13  and  March 
6,  1913. 

But  a  further  brief  and  preliminary  indica- 
tion is  here  in  order  to  prepare  the  reader  a 
little  better  for  what  is  to  follow. 

This  book  is  not  the  work  of  an  historian, 
nor  yet  of  a  technical  theologian.  It  is  the 
outcome  of  my  own  philosophical  study  of 
certain  problems  belonging  to  ethics,  to  re- 
ligious experience,  and  to  general  philosophy. 
In  spirit  I  believe  my  present  book  to  be 
in  essential  harmony  with  the  bases  of  the 
philosophical  idealism  set  forth  in  various 
earlier  volumes  of  my  own,  and  especially  in 
the  work  entitled  "The  World  and  the  In- 
dividual "  (published  in  1899-1901).  On  the 
other  hand,  the  present  work  contains  no 


PREFACE 

mere  repetition  of  my  former  expressions  of 
opinion.  There  is  much  in  it  which  I  did 
not  expect  to  say  when  I  began  the  task 
here  accomplished.  As  to  certain  metaphys- 
ical opinions  which  are  stated,  in  outline,  in 
the  second  volume  of  this  book,  I  now  owe 
much  more  to  our  great  and  unduly  neg- 
lected American  logician,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce, 
than  I  do  to  the  common  tradition  of  recent 
idealism,  and  certainly  very  much  more  than 
I  ever  have  owed,  at  any  point  of  my  own 
philosophical  development,  to  the  doctrines 
which,  with  technical  accuracy,  can  be  justly 
attributed  to  Hegel.  [It  is  time,  I  think, 
that  the  long  customary,  but  unjust  and 
loose  usage  of  the  adjective  "Hegelian" 
should  be  dropped.  The  genuinely  Hegelian 
views  were  the  ones  stated  by  Hegel  himself, 
and  by  his  early  followers.  My  own  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity,  in  these  volumes, 
despite  certain  agreements  with  the  classical 
Hegelian  theses,  differs  from  that  of  Hegel, 
and  of  the  classical  Hegelian  school,  in  im- 
portant ways  which  I  can,  with  a  clear  con- 
science, all  the  more  vigorously  emphasize, 

xi 


PREFACE 

just  because  I  have,  all  my  life,  endeavored 
to  treat  Hegel  both  with  careful  historical 
justice  and  with  genuine  appreciation.  In 
fact  the  present  is  a  distinctly  new  interpreta- 
tion of  the  "Problem  of  Christianity." 

One  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  one  of  the 
fairest  of  the  reviewers  of  my  "Spirit  of 
Modern  Philosophy"  said  of  my  former 
position,  as  stated,  in  1892,  in  the  book  thus 
named,  that  I  then  came  nearer  to  being  a 
follower  of  Schopenhauer  than  a  disciple  of 
Hegel.  As  far  as  it  went  this  statement 
gave  a  just  impression  of  how  I  then  stood. 
I  have  never,  since  then,  been  more  of  an 
Hegelian  than  at  that  time  I  was.  I  am 
now  less  so  than  ever  before. 

Ill 

One  favorite  and  facile  way  of  disposing 
of  a  student  of  idealistic  philosophy  who 
writes  about  religion  is  to  say  that  he  has 
first  formed  a  system  of  "abstract  concep- 
tions," whose  interest,  if  they  have  any  in- 
terest, is  purely  technical,  and  whose  relation 
to  the  concrete  religious  concerns  of  man- 


PREFACE 

kind  is  wholly  external  and  formal ;  and  that 
he  has  then  tried  to  steal  popular  favor  by  mis- 
using traditional  religious  phraseology,  and 
by  identifying  his  "sterile  intellectualism," 
and  these  his  barren  technicalities,  with  the 
religious  beliefs  and  experiences  of  mankind, 
through  taking  a  vicious  advantage  of  am- 
biguous words. 

I  can  only  ask  any  one  who  approaches 
this  book  to  read  Volume  I  before  he  under- 
takes to  judge  the  metaphysical  discussions 
which  form  the  bulk  of  Volume  II ;  and  also 
to  weigh  the  relations  between  my  meta- 
physical and  my  religious  phraseology  in 
the  light  of  the  summary  contained  in  Lec- 
tures XV  and  XVI  of  the  second  volume. 

If  after  such  a  reading  of  my  actual  opin- 
ions, as  set  down  in  this  book,  he  still  in- 
sists that  I  have  endeavored  artificially  to 
force  a  set  of  foreign  and  preconceived  meta- 
physical "abstractions"  upon  the  genuine 
religious  life  of  my  brethren,  I  cannot  sup- 
ply him  with  fairness  of  estimate,  but  ought 
to  remain  indifferent  to  his  manner  of 
speech. 

jriii 


PREFACE 

As  a  fact,  this  book  is  the  outcome  of  expe- 
rience, and,  in  its  somewhat  extended  practi- 
cal sections,  it  is  written  (if  I  may  borrow  a 
phrase  from  the  Polish  master  of  romance, 
Sienkiewicz) ,  "for  the  strengthening  of  hearts." 
That  some  portions  of  the  discussion  are 
technically  metaphysical  is  a  result  of  the 
deliberate  plan  of  the  whole  work ;  and  tech- 
nical assertions  demand,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
technical  criticisms.  The  novelty  of  some  of 
my  metaphysical  theses  in  my  second  volume, 
and  the  lack  of  space  for  their  adequate 
statement  in  this  book,  have  made  their 
exposition,  as  I  here  have  time  to  give  it, 
both  incomplete,  and  justly  subject  to  many 
objections,  some  of  which  I  have  anticipated 
in  my  text.  But,  in  any  case,  I  have  not 
been  merely  telling  anybody's  old  story  over 
again. 

Since  I  have  been  writing  from  the  life,  I 
of  course  owe  a  great  deal  to  the  inspiration 
that  I  long  ago  obtained  from  William  James's 
"Varieties  of  Religious  Experience."  I  even 
venture  to  hope  that  (while  I  have  of  course 
laid  stress  upon  no  interests  which  I  could 

xiv 


PREFACE 

recognize  as  due  to  merely  private  con- 
cerns of  my  own)  I  might  still  be  address- 
ing at  least  some  few  readers  who  are  able 
to  understand,  and  perhaps  sometimes  to 
echo,  a  cry  of  genuine  feeling  when  they  hear 
it.  For,  after  all,  it  is  more  important  that 
we  should  together  recognize  in  religion  our 
own  common  personal  needs  and  life-interests 
than  that  we  should  agree  about  our  formulas. 
So  I  have  indeed  tried,  in  this  book,  to 
speak  as  one  wanderer  speaks  to  another  who 
is  his  friend,  when  the  way  is  long  and  ob- 
scure. 

Yet  in  one  very  important  respect  the 
religious  experience  upon  which,  in  this  book, 
I  most  depend,  differs  very  profoundly  from 
that  whose  "varieties"  James  described.  He 
deliberately  confined  himself  to  the  religious 
experience  of  individuals.  My  main  topic  is 
a  form  of  social  religious  experience,  namely, 
that  form  which,  in  ideal,  the  Apostle  Paul 
viewed  as  the  experience  of  the  Church. 
This  social  form  of  experience  is  that  upon 
which  loyalty  depends.  James  supposed  that 
the  religious  experience  of  a  church  must 

XV 


PREFACE 

needs  be  "conventional,"   and  consequently 
must  be  lacking  in  depth  and  in  sincerity. 

This,  to  my  mind,  was  a  profound  and  a  mo- 
mentous error  in  the  whole  religious  philos- 
ophy of  our  greatest  American  master  in  the 
study  of  the  psychology  of  religious  experience. 
All  experience  must  be  at  least  individual 
experience;  but  unless  it  is  also  social  ex- 
perience, and  unless  the  whole  religious  com- 
munity which  is  in  question  unites  to  share 
it,  this  experience  is  but  as  sounding  brass, 
and  as  a  tinkling  cymbal.  This  truth  is 
what  Paul  saw.  This  is  the  rock  upon  which 
the  true  and  ideal  church  is  built.  This  is 
the  essence  of  Christianity. 

If  indeed  I  myself  must  cry  "out  of  the 
depths"  before  the  light  can  come  to  me,  it 
must  be  my  Community  that,  in  the  end, 
saves  me.  To  assert  this  and  to  live  this 
doctrine  constitute  the  very  core  of  Chris- 
tian experience,  and  of  the  "Religion  of 
Loyalty."  In  discussing  "the  varieties  of 
religious  experience,"  which  here  concern 
us,  I  have  everywhere  kept  this  thesis  in 
mind. 

rri 


PREFACE 

IV 

The  assertion  just  made  summarizes  the 
single  thought  to  whose  discussion,  illustra- 
tion, defence,  and  philosophy  this  book  is 
devoted.  This  assertion  is  the  one  which, 
in  my  "Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  I  was  trying, 
so  far  as  I  then  could,  to  expound  and  to 
apply.  We  are  saved,  if  at  all,  by  devotion 
to  the  Community,  in  the  sense  of  that  term 
which  these  two  volumes  attempt  to  explain 
and  to  defend.  This  is  what  I  mean  by 
loyalty.  Because  the  word  "loyalty"  ends  in 
ty,  and  because  what  a  "Community"  is,  is 
at  present  so  ill  understood  by  most  philos- 
ophers, my  former  discussions  of  this  topic 
have  been  accused  of  basing  all  the  duties  of 
life  upon  an  artificial  abstraction.  When  I 
now  say  that  by  loyalty  I  mean  the  practi- 
cally devoted  love  of  an  individual  for  a  com- 
munity, I  shall  still  leave  unenlightened  those 
who  stop  short  at  the  purely  verbal  fact  that 
the  word  "community"  also  ends  in  ty. 
But  let  such  readers  wait  until  they  have 
at  least  read  Lectures  I,  III,  and  VII  of 

xvii 


PREFACE 

ray  first  volume.  Then  they  may  know  what 
is  at  issue. 

This  book,  if  it  is  nothing  else,  is  at  least 
one  more  effort  to  tell  what  loyalty  is.  I  also 
want  to  put  loyalty  —  this  love  of  the  indi- 
vidual for  the  community  —  where  it  actually 
belongs,  not  only  at  the  heart  of  the  virtues, 
not  only  at  the  summit  of  the  mountains 
which  the  human  spirit  must  climb  if  man  is 
really  to  be  saved,  but  also  (where  it  equally 
belongs)  at  the  turning-point  of  human  his- 
tory, —  at  the  point  when  the  Christian  ideal 
was  first  defined,  —  and  when  the  Church 
Universal, — that  still  invisible  Community  of 
all  the  faithful,  that  homeland  of  the  human 
spirit,  "which  eager  hearts  expect,"  was  first 
introduced  as  a  vision,  as  a  hope,  as  a  con- 
scious longing  to  mankind.  I  want  to  show 
what  loyalty  is,  and  that  all  this  is  true  of  the 
loyal  spirit. 

Some  of  my  main  theses,  in  this  book,  are 
the  following :  First,  Christianity  is,  in  its 
essence,  the  most  typical,  and,  so  far  in  human 
history,  the  most  highly  developed  religion  of 
loyalty.  Secondly,  loyalty  itself  is  a  perfectly 

xviii 


PREFACE 

concrete  form  and  interest  of  the  spiritual  life 
of  mankind.  Thirdly,  this  very  fact  about 
the  meaning  and  the  value  of  universal  loy- 
alty is  one  which  the  Apostle  Paul  learned  in 
and  from  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the 
early  Christian  communities,  and  then  en- 
riched and  transformed  through  his  own  work 
as  missionary  and  teacher.  Still  another  of 
my  theses  is  this :  Whatever  may  hereafter 
be  the  fortunes  of  Christian  institutions,  or  of 
Christian  traditions,  the  religion  of  loyalty, 
the  doctrine  of  the  salvation  of  the  otherwise 
hopelessly  lost  individual  through  devotion 
to  the  life  of  the  genuinely  real  and  Universal 
Community,  must  survive,  and  must  direct 
the  future  both  of  religion  and  of  mankind, 
if  man  is  to  be  saved  at  all.  As  to  what  the 
word  "salvation"  means,  and  as  to  why  I 
use  it,  the  reader  can  discover,  if  he  chooses, 
from  the  text  of  these  lectures. 


The  doctrines  of  the  Community,  of  Loy- 
alty, of  the  "lost  state  of  the  natural  individ- 
ual," and  of  Atonement  as  the  function  in 

xix 


PREFACE 

which  the  life  of  the  community  culminates, 
appear,  in  the  volumes  of  this  book,  in  two 
forms,  whose  clear  distinction  and  close  con- 
nection ought  next  to  be  emphasized  in  this 
preface.  First,  these  doctrines,  and  the  ideas 
in  terms  of  which  they  are  expressed,  are 
verifiable  results  of  the  higher  social  religious 
experience  of  mankind.  Were  there  no  Chris- 
tianity, were  there  no  Christians  in  the 
world,  all  these  ideas  would  be  needed  to  ex- 
press the  meaning  of  true  loyalty,  the  saving 
value  of  the  right  relation  of  any  human  in- 
dividual to  the  community  of  which  he  is  a 
member,  and  the  true  sense  of  life.  These 
doctrines,  then,  need  no  dogmas  of  any 
historical  church  to  define  them,  and  no 
theology,  and  no  technical  metaphysical 
theory,  to  furnish  a  foundation  for  them. 
In  the  second  place,  however,  these  Chris- 
tian ideas  are  based  upon  deep  metaphysical 
truths  whose  significance  is  more  than 
human. 

Historically  speaking,  the  Christian  church 
first  discovered  the  Christian  ideas.  The 
founder  of  Christianity,  so  far  as  we  know 

XX 


PREFACE 

what  his  teachings  were,  seems  not  to  have 
defined  them  adequately.  They  first  came 
to  a  relatively  full  statement  through  the 
religious  life  of  the  Pauline  Churches ;  and  the 
Pauline  epistles  contain  their  first,  although 
still  not  quite  complete,  formulation.  Paul 
himself  was  certainly  not  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity. But  the  Pauline  communities  first 
were  conscious  of  the  essence  of  Christianity. 

Consequently  those  are  right  who  have 
held,  what  the  "modernists"  of  the  Roman 
Church  were  for  a  time  asserting,  —  before 
officialism  turned  its  back,  in  characteristic  /•> 
fashion,  upon  the  really  new  and  deeply 
valuable  light,  which  these  modernists  were, 
for  the  time,  bringing  to  their  own  commun- 
ion. Those,  I  say,  are  right  who  have  held 
that  the  Church,  rather  than  the  person  of 
the  founder,  ought  to  be  viewed  as  the  cen- 
tral idea  of  Christianity. 

On  the  other  hand,  neither  the  "modern- 
ists" of  recent  controversy,  nor  any  other  of 
the  apologists  for  the  traditions  of  the  his- 
torical Christian  church,  have  yet  seen  the 
meaning  of  the  "religion  of  loyalty"  as  the 

xxi 


PREFACE 

Apostle  Paul,  in  certain  of  his  greatest  mo- 
ments and  words,  saw  and  expressed  that 
meaning.  The  apostle's  language,  regarding 
this  matter,  is  as  imperishable  as  it  is  well 
warranted  by  human  experience,  and  as  it  is 
also  separable  from  the  accidents  of  later 
dogmatic  formulation,  and  inexhaustible  in 
the  metaphysical  problems  which  it  brings  to 
our  attention. 

Hence  the  most  significant  task  for  a  modern 
revision  of  our  estimate  of  what  is  vital  in 
Christianity  depends  upon  the  recognition  of 
certain  aspects  of  Christian  social  experi- 
ence and  of  human  destiny,  aspects  to  whose 
exposition  and  defence,  first  in  empirical 
terms,  and  then  in  the  light  of  a  reexamina- 
tion  of  certain  fundamental  metaphysical 
ideas,  these  two  volumes  are  devoted. 

The  "Christian  ideas"  of  the  Church,  of 
the  lost  state  of  man,  of  grace,  and  of  atone- 
ment, are  here  discussed,  first  separately, 
and  then  in  their  -natural  union.  In  this 
examination,  Pauline  Christianity  receives  a 
prominence  which  I  believe  to  be  justified 
by  the  considerations  which  are  emphasized 

xxii 


PREFACE 

in  my  text.  After  an  extended  discussion, 
in  the  second  volume,  of  the  "metaphysics 
of  the  Christian  ideas,"  I  return,  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  research,  to  the  relation 
of  Christianity  to  our  modern  social  ex- 
perience, and  to  the  problems  of  to-day. 

The  outcome  of  this  method  of  dealing 
with  "The  Problem  of  Christianity"  involves, 
I  believe,  not  indeed  a  "solution,"  but  a 
great  simplification  of  the  problems  of  Chris- 
tology,  of  dogma  in  general,  and  of  the  rela- 
tions between  the  true  interests  of  philosophy 
upon  the  one  side,  and  religion  upon  the 
other.  The  reader  will  somewhat  dimly  see 
the  nature  of  the  simplification  in  question 
when  he  reads  Lecture  I.  In  Lecture  III, 
on  the  "Realm  of  Grace,"  he  will  begin  to 
anticipate  with  greater  clearness  the  char- 
acteristic outlines  of  my  version  of  the  "re- 
ligion of  loyalty."  But  not  until  Lectures 
XV  and  XVI  will  the  outcome  of  the  closely 
connected  story  to  which,  despite  many 
episodes,  the  whole  book  is  devoted,  be  ready 
for  the  reader's  final  judgment. 


XXlll 


PREFACE 

VI 

It  is  necessary  still  to  forestall  one  fairly 
obvious  criticism.  Both  "orthodox"  and 
"liberal"  Christianity,  as  they  usually  state 
their  otherwise  conflicting  opinions,  very 

commonly    agree    in    making    their   different 

a 

attempted  solutions  of  the  "Problem  of 
Christianity"  depend  upon  the  views  which 
they  respectively  defend  regarding  the  per- 
son of  the  founder  of  the  faith.  In  Lecture 
VIII  of  the  first  volume,  and  in  Lecture 
XVI  of  the  second  volume,  I  have  summa- 
rized the  little  that  I  have  to  say  about  the 
person  of  the  founder. 

I  cannot  find  in  the  ordinary  "liberal" 
solution  of  the  problem  of  the  personality 
of  Jesus,  as  Harnack,  as  Weinel,  and  as  most 
"advanced  liberal"  discussions  of  our  topic 
state  that  solution,  anything  satisfactory. 

My  principal  reason  for  this  dissatisfac- 
tion, when  urged  against  the  usual  "  liberal " 
view  of  the  significance  of  the  person  of 
Jesus,  is  a  novel,  but,  if  I  am  right,  a  momen- 
tous reason.  If  Christianity  is,  in  its  inmost 

xxiv 


PREFACE 

essence,  the  "religion  of  loyalty,"  the  reli- 
gion of  that  which  in  this  book  I  have  called 
"The  Beloved  Community,"  and  if  Pauline 
Christianity  contained  the  essence  of  the  only 
doctrine  by  which  mankind,  through  devo- 
tion to  the  community,  through  loyalty,  are 
to  be  saved,  —  then  Buddhism  is  right  in 
holding  that  the  very  form  of  the  individual 
self  is  a  necessary  source  of  woe  and  of  wrong. 
In  that  case,  no  individual  human  self  can  be 
saved  except  through  ceasing  to  be  a  mere 
individual. 

But  if  this  be  so,  Harnack's  view  and  the 
usual  "liberal"  view,  to  the  effect  that  there 
was  an  ideally  perfect  human  individual, 
whose  example,  or  whose  personal  influence, 
involves  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  human 
life,  and  is  saving,  —  this  whole  view  is  an 
opinion  essentially  opposed  to  the  deepest 
facts  of  human  nature,  and  to  the  very  es- 
sence of  the  "religion  of  loyalty."  Not 
through  imitating  nor  yet  through  loving  any 
mere  individual  human  being  can  we  be 
saved,  but  only  through  loyalty  to  the 
"Beloved  Community." 

XXV 


PREFACE 

Equally,  however,  must  I  decline  to  follow 
any  of  the  various  forms  of  traditionally 
orthodox  dogma  or  theory  regarding  the 
person  of  Christ.  Legends,  doubtful  his- 
torical hypotheses,  and  dogmas  leave  us,  in 
this  field,  in  well-known,  and,  to  my  mind, 
simply  hopeless  perplexities. 

Hence  this  book  has  no  positive  thesis  to 
maintain  regarding  the  person  of  the  founder 
of  Christianity.  I  am  not  competent  to  settle 
any  of  the  numerous  historical  doubts  as 
to  the  founder's  person,  and  as  to  the  details 
of  his  life.  The  thesis  of  this  book-  is  that 
the  essence  of  Christianity,  as  the  Apostle 
Paul  stated  that  essence,  depends  upon  re- 
garding the  being  which  the  early  Christian 
Church  believed  itself  to  represent,  and  the 
being  which  I  call,  in  this  book,  the  "Beloved 
Community,"  as  the  true  source,  through 
loyalty,  of  the  salvation  of  man.  This  doc- 
trine I  hold  to  be  both  empirically  verifiable 
within  the  limits  of  our  experience,  and  meta- 
physically defensible  as  an  expression  of 
the  life  and  the  spiritual  significance  of  the 
whole  universe. 


PREFACE 

A  distinguished  authority  upon  Christology, 
who  has  kindly  listened  to  some  of  my  lec- 
tures, and  who  has  kindly  honored  me  with 
his  criticism,  points  out  to  me,  however,  the 
final  objection  which  I  can  here  mention. 

"You  imagine,"  he  says,  "that  early  Chris- 
tianity depended,  for  the  significance  of  its 
faith,  upon  the  fact  that  a  certain  body  of 
men,  constituting  the  Pauline  churches,  were 
loyal  to  the  spiritual  unity,  to  the  ideal  charity, 
which,  as  they  believed,  the  saving  work  of 
Christ  had  freely  given  to  them,  and  to  their 
community.  But  you  speak  of  this  early 
Christian  community  as  if  it  were  its  own 
creator,  —  as  if  it  grew  up  spontaneously, 
as  if  its  form  of  saving  and  universal  loyalty 
arose  without  any  cause.  Can  you  make 
religious  history  intelligible  in  this  way  ? 
Who  created  the  church  ?  Who  inspired 
the  new  loyalty  ?  Was  not  the  founder  the 
cause  of  his  church  ?  How  could  the  church 
have  existed  without  its  founder  ?  Must 
not  the  founder  have  possessed,  as  an  in- 
dividual, a  spiritual  power  equivalent  to 
that  which  he  exerted  ?  Must  it  not  then 


xxvn 


PREFACE 

have  been  Jesus  himself,  and  not  the  Com- 
munity, —  not  the  church,  —  which  is  the 
central  source  of  Christianity  ?  Otherwise 
does  not  your  theory  hang  in  the  air  ?  But 
if  the  founder  really  created  this  community 
and  its  loyalty,  does  not  the  whole  meaning 
of  the  Christian  religion  once  more  centre  in 
the  founder,  in  his  life,  and  in  his  person  ?  " 
I  can  here  only  reply  to  my  kindly  critic 
that  this  book  (as  Lecture  III  carefully  points 
out)  has  no  hypothesis  whatever  to  offer  as 
to  how  the  Christian  community  originated. 
Personally  I  shall  never  hope,  in  my  present 
existence,  to  know  anything  whatever  about 
that  origin,  beyond  the  barest  commonplaces. 
The  historical  evidence  at  hand  is  insufficient 
to  tell  us  how  the  church  originated.  The 
legends  do  not  solve  the  problem.  I  have  a 
right  to  decline,  and  I  actually  decline  to  ex- 
press an  opinion  as  to  any  details  about 
the  person  and  life  of  the  founder.  For 
such  an  opinion  the  historical  evidences  are 
lacking,  although  it  seems  to  me  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  sayings  and  the  parables 
which  tradition  attributed  to  the  founder 


xxvin 


PREFACE 

were  the  work  of  some  single  author,  con- 
cerning whose  life  we  probably  possess  some 
actually  correct  reports. 

On  the  other  hand,  regarding  the  essence  of 
the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches  and  con- 
cerning the  actual  life  of  those  churches,  we  pos- 
sess, in  the  Pauline  epistles,  information  which 
is  priceless,  which  reveals  to  us  the  religion 
of  loyalty  in  its  classic  and  universal  form,  and 
which  involves  the  Christian  ideas  expounded, 
in  my  own  poor  way,  in  what  here  follows. 

The  transformation,  not  of  historical,  but 
of  Christological,  of  ethical,  and  of  religious 
ideas  which  would  follow  upon  an  adequate 
recognition  of  these  simple  considerations 
amply  justifies  the  effort  of  one  who  under- 
takes, as  I  do,  not  to  add  to  or  to  take  away 
from  early  Christian  history,  and  not  to  solve 
the  problems  of  that  history,  but  simply  to 
expound  the  essence  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life,  and  the  relation  of  the  Christian  ideas 
to  the  real  world. 

VII 

This  preface  must  close  with  a  few  words 
of  acknowledgment  and  of  explanation. 

xxix 


PREFACE 

In  1911  the  "President  and  Fellows  of 
Harvard  University"  -a  body  which  is  also 
known  as  "The  Corporation"  —appointed  me, 
for  three  years,  holder  of  the  endowment 
known  as  "The  Cabot  Fellowship,"  with 
the  understanding  that  I  should  devote  some 
of  my  time  to  study  and  research.  In  the 
beginning  of  1912,  when  my  work  was,  for  a 
brief  period,  interrupted,  the  Harvard  Cor- 
poration put  me  under  an  additional  obliga- 
tion, by  granting  me  an  extraordinary  leave 
of  absence.  Since  then,  I  have  been  allowed 
the  opportunity  not  only  to  write  these 
lectures,  but  to  accept  an  offer  made  in  the 
summer  of  1912  by  the  Trustees  of  the 
"Hibbert  Foundation"  to  deliver  this  entire 
course  on  "The  Problem  of  Christianity" 
at  Manchester  College,  Oxford;  while  the 
added  generosity  of  President  Lowell,  who 
also  acted,  in  this  matter,  as  Trustee  of  the 
Lowell  Institute  in  Boston,  has  enabled  me 
to  deliver  the  first  part  of  the  course  (the 
discussions  contained  in  Volume  I  of  this 
book)  as  public  lectures  before  the  Lowell 
Institute  in  November  and  December  of  1912. 


XXX 


PREFACE 

At  Manchester  College,  on  the  "Hibbert 
Foundation,"  the  lectures  have  been  read 
between  January  13  and  March,  1913,  and 
have  thus  continued  throughout  the  whole 
of  one  Oxford  term. 

Seldom,  then,  has  a  student  of  philosophy 
been  so  much  indebted  to  official  and  to  per- 
sonal kindliness  for  the  chance  to  perform 
such  a  task.  I  have  heartily  to  thank  the 
persons  and  authorities  just  mentioned,  and 
to  insist  that,  under  such  conditions,  the 
faults  of  my  book  must  be  regarded  as 
wholly  my  own,  and  judged  sternly. 

Prominent  among  the  authors  who  have 
influenced  my  discussion  of  the  idea  of  Atone- 
ment is  the  late  Dr.  R.  C.  Moberly,  whose 
book  on  "Atonement  and  Personality"  also 
had  a  deep  effect  upon  my  treatment  of  the 
idea  of  the  Church.  To  Professor  Sanday's 
"  Christologies,  Ancient  and  Modern  "  I  owe 
a  great  debt.  Dinsmore's  "Atonement  in 
Literature  and  Art"  came  into  my  hands 
only  after  my  own  discussion  of  Atone- 
ment had  assumed  definitive  shape. 

Among  the  friendly  critics  who  have  aided 
zzxi 


PREFACE 

me  in  preparing  my  text,  I  ought  to  mention 
Professor  E.  C.  Moore,  Professor  James 
Jackson  Putnam,  and  Professor  George  H. 
Palmer  of  Harvard  University .  Professor  Law- 
rence P.  Jacks  of  Manchester  College,  Ox- 
ford, has  helped  me,  from  the  beginning  of 
my  task,  in  ways  which  I  cannot  here  ac- 
knowledge in  any  adequate  fashion.  I  have 
also  to  acknowledge  the  assistance  of  Principal 
J.  Estlin  Carpenter,  of  Professor  Charles  M. 
Bakewell  of  Yale  University,  and  of  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  R.  C.  Cabot  of  Boston.  Dr.  J.  Loewen- 
berg  has  helped  me  not  only  with  stimu- 
lating and  sometimes  decisively  effective 
criticism  of  my  lectures  as  they  grew,  but 
with  other  much-needed  aid  in  preparing 
this  book.  Time  would  quite  fail  me  to 
tell  of  the  numerous  other  friends,  both  at 
home  and  in  Oxford,  who  have  accompanied, 
encouraged,  and  assisted  my  efforts. 


JOSIAH   ROYCE. 


CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
April  13,  1913. 


XXXll 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 
VOLUME  I 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 
LECTURE  I 

PAGE 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD        ....        1 

LECTURE  H 

THE  IDEA  OF  THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY         .        .      47 

LECTURE  HI 

THE  MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  .        .        .    107 

LECTURE  IV 
THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 161 

LECTURE  V 
TIME  AND  GUILT 215 

LECTURE  VI 

ATONEMENT 269 

xxxiii 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 
LECTURE  VH 

PACT 

THE  CHBISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE    ....    325 

LECTURE  VHI 
THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAS  381 


XXXIV 


INTRODUCTION 

WHEN  these  lectures  were  delivered  at 
Manchester  College,  Oxford,  the  hear- 
ers were  supplied  with  the  following  outline 
under  the  general  title:  "Plan  of  Lectures 
on  the  Problem  of  Christianity."  This  plan 
is  here  repeated  with  its  headings  as  they 
appeared  on  this  printed  programme. 

PRELIMINARY  NOTE 

THESE  lectures  are  divided  into  two  parts : 
Part  I  (Lectures  I- VIII),  on  "THE  CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE";  Part  II  (Lectures  IX- 
XVI),  on  "THE  REAL  WORLD  AND  THE  CHRIS- 
TIAN IDEAS." 

Part  I  is  a  study  of  the  human  and  empirical 
aspect  of  some  of  the  leading  and  essential 
ideas  of  Christianity.  Part  II  deals  with  the 
technically  metaphysical  problems  to  which 
these  ideas  give  rise.  Parts  I  and  II  are 
contrasted  in  their  methods,  the  first  part 
discussing  religious  experience,  the  second 
part  dealing  with  its  metaphysical  foundations. 

XXXV 


INTRODUCTION 

The  two  parts,  however,  are  closely  connected 
in  their  purpose ;  and  at  the  close,  in  Lectures 
XV  and  XVI,  the  relations  between  the  meta- 
physical and  the  empirical  aspects  of  the  whole 
undertaking  are  reviewed. 

The  "Christian  Ideas"  which  the  lecturer 
proposes  to  treat  as  "leading  and  essential' 
are:  (1)  The  Idea  of  the  "Community" 
(historically  represented  by  the  Church) ; 
(2)  The  Idea  of  the  "Lost  State  of  the  Nat- 
ural Man";  (3)  The  Idea  of  "Atonement," 
together  with  the  somewhat  more  general 
Idea  of  "Saving  Grace." 

Each  of  these  ideas  is,  for  the  purposes  of 
these  lectures,  to  be  generalized  as  well  as 
interpreted.  The  "Community"  exists,  in 
human  history,  in  countless  different  forms 
and  grades,  of  which  the  visible  and  historical 
Christian  Church  is  one  instance.  The  ideal 
community  in  which,  according  to  Christian 
doctrine,  the  Divine  Spirit  finds  its  expression, 
presents  a  problem  which  cannot  be  ade- 
quately treated  without  considering  whether 
the  whole  universe  is  or  is  not,  in  some  sense, 
both  a  community,  and  a  divine  being.  The 
"lost  state  of  the  natural  man"  is  a  doctrine 
dependent  upon  the  views  about  the  nature 

xxxvi 


INTRODUCTION 

of  human  individuality  which  are  most  char- 
acteristic of  the  Christian  spirit. 

Christianity  has  always  been  a  religion, 
not  only  of  Love,  but  of  Loyalty.  By  loyalty 
is  meant  the  thoroughgoing  and  loving  devo- 
tion of  an  individual  to  a  community.  The 
"morally  detached"  individual,  who  has  not 
found  the  community  to  which  to  be  loyal,  or 
who,  having  first  found  that  community,  has 
lost  his  relation  to  it  through  an  act  of  deliber- 
ate disloyalty,  is  (according  to  such  a  religion) 
wholly  unable,  through  any  further  individ- 
ual deed  of  his  own,  to  win  or  to  regain  the 
true  goal  of  life.  The  ideas  of  "grace"  and 
of  "atonement"  have  to  do  with  the  question 
regarding  the  way  in  which  the  individual, 
whom  no  deed  of  his  own  (according  to  this 
religious  view)  can  save  or  restore,  can,  never- 
theless, be  saved  through  a  deed  "not  his 
own"  —  a  deed  which  the  community  or 
which  a  servant  of  the  community  in  whom 
its  Spirit  "fully  dwells,"  may  accomplish  on 
behalf  of  the  lost  individual.  In  this  fashion 
it  is  possible  to  indicate  how  our  three  Chris- 
tian ideas  may  be  and  should  be  generalized 
for  the  purpose  of  the  present  lectures. 

These  three  Christian  ideas  —  that  of  the 


XXXVll 


INTRODUCTION 

Community,  of  the  Lost  Individual,  and  of 
Atonement  —  have  a  close  relation  to  a  doc- 
trine of  life,  which,  when  duly  generalized,  can 
be  at  least  in  part  studied  as  a  purely  human 
"Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  and  can  be  esti- 
mated in  empirical  terms,  apart  from  any  use 
of  technical  dogmas,  and  apart  from  any  meta- 
physical opinion.  The  "Community"  is  the 
object  to  which  loyalty  is  due.  The  "Lost 
State"  is  the  state  of  those  who  have  never 
found,  or  who,  once  finding,  have  then  lost 
their  loyalty.  "Atonement"  and  "Divine 
Grace"  may  be  considered  as  if  they  were 
expressions  of  the  purely  human  process 
whereby  the  community  seeks  and  saves, 
through  its  suffering  servants  and  its  Spirit, 
that  which  is  lost. 

Nevertheless,  no  purely  empirical  study  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  can,  by  itself, 
suffice  to  answer  our  main  questions.  It  is 
indeed  necessary  to  consider  the  basis  in 
human  nature  which  the  religion  of  loyalty 
possesses,  and  to  portray  the  relation  of  this 
religion  to  the  social  experience  of  mankind ; 
and  to  this  task  the  first  part  of  these  lectures 
is  confined.  But  such  a  preliminary  study 
sends  us  beyond  itself. 

xxxviil 


INTRODUCTION 

For  each  of  the  Christian  ideas  demands  a 
further  interpretation  in  terms  of  a  theory  of 
the  real  world.  Religion  can  be  experienced 
and  lived  apart  from  metaphysics ;  but  (if 
we  adapt  Anselm's  well-known  use  of  a  Scrip- 
tural word)  we  may  say  that  whoever  has 
learned  what  it  is  to  "do  the  will"  of  the  loyal 
spirit  has  a  right  to  endeavor  to  "know  the 
doctrine"  which  shall  teach  whether,  and  in 
what  sense,  the  Spirit,  the  Community,  and 
the  process  of  salvation  are  genuine  realities, 
transcending  any  of  their  human  embodiments. 

The  task  of  the  second  part  of  these  lectures 
is  therefore  to  consider  the  neglected  philo- 
sophical problem  of  the  sense  in  which  the 
community  and  its  Spirit  are  realities.  For 
this  purpose  a  somewhat  new  form  of  Ideal- 
ism, and,  in  particular,  a  new  chapter  in  the 
theory  of  knowledge  must  be  studied. 

TOPICS  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  LECTURES 

PART  I.  — THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF 
LIFE 

LECTURE  I.  —  THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

The  "Problem  of  Christianity"  stated.  The 
creed  of  the  "modern  man."  The  modern  man 

xxxix 


INTRODUCTION 

and  the  "education  of  the  human  race."  The 
methods  to  be  employed  in  this  study.  Question  : 
"In  what  sense,  if  in  any,  does  the  Divine  Spirit 
dwell  in  the  Church?"  First  glimpses  of  the 
course  of  the  inquiry. 

LECTURE   II.  —  THE   IDEA    OF   THE   UNIVERSAL 
COMMUNITY 

Tragic  fortunes  of  great  ideals  especially  exem- 
plified by  the  history  of  the  ideal  of  the  Church. 
The  conflict  of  spirit  and  letter.  The  basis  of 
loyalty  in  human  nature.  The  ideal  of  loyalty 
in  its  non-Christian  forms.  The  Pauline  develop- 
ment and  transformation  of  the  original  doctrine 
of  Christian  love  through  the  doctrine  of  charity 
in  its  relation  to  the  Christian  community. 

LECTURE  III.  —  THE  MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE 
INDIVIDUAL 

Social  aspects  of  the  doctrine  which  is  stated  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 
"The  Law"  as  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
Self-consciousness.  The  natural  and  social  culti- 
vation of  the  conscience  as  a  training  in  self-will. 
Modern  illustrations  of  the  process  which  was 
first  observed  by  the  Apostle.  Individualism  and 
collectivism.  The  community  of  hate  and  the 
community  of  love.  The  burden  of  the  individual 

xl 


INTRODUCTION 

and  the  escape  through  the  spirit  of  loyalty.     The 
"new  creature." 

LECTURE  IV.  —  THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 

A  further  view  of  Christianity,  as  a  Religion  of 
Loyalty.  Loyalty  in  its  natural  origin  and  in  its 
genuinely  spiritual  forms.  The  doctrine  of  the 
"two  levels"  of  human  nature.  The  problem  of 
the  origin  of  the  "beloved  community"  and  of  the 
beginnings  of  a  "life  in  the  spirit."  Relations  of 
Christian  loyalty  to  the  origins  of  Christian  dogma. 
The  Spirit  in  the  Community,  and  the  personal 
Spirit  of  the  Community.  The  Founder  and  the 
problem  of  the  "two  natures."  The  "two  na- 
tures" and  the  "two  levels."  Illustration  from  the 
Fourth  Gospel. 

LECTURE  V.  —  TIME  AND  GUILT 

Matthew  Arnold  on  Puritanism  and  on  "getting 
rid  of  sin."  Conflicts  between  the  modern  spirit 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  "endless  penalty"  of  sin. 
Reconsideration  of  these  conflicts.  The  rational 
theory  of  the  nature  of  "  mortal  sin."  The  relation 
of  our  acts  to  the  whole  time-process.  Every 
deed  is  irrevocable.  Consequence  in  case  of  the 
deliberately  disloyal  deed.  Repentance  no  ade- 
quate remedy  for  guilt.  Inability  of  the  traitor 
to  atone  for  his  own  treason.  The  rational  doc- 
trine of  "endless  penalty"  not  a  morbid,  or  a 

xli 


INTRODUCTION 

cheerless,  or  an  arbitrary  doctrine.  Decisiveness 
of  character  and  rigidity  of  self -judgment.  "I 
was  my  own  destroyer  and  will  be  my  own  here- 
after," is  not  an  expression  of  weak  brooding,  but 
of  rational  self -estimate. 

LECTURE  VI.  —  ATONEMENT 

The  idea  of  Atonement  reviewed  with  reference 
to  the  "problem  of  the  traitor."  Typical  and 
symbolic  value  of  this  problem.  Conscience  and 
personal  freedom.  The  traitor's  own  self -estimate 
is  decisive  as  to  what  can  atone  for  his  guilt,  pro- 
vided only  that  he  is  completely  awakened  to  an 
insight  into  the  irrevocable  facts.  Inadequacy 
both  of  the  "penal-satisfaction"  theories  and  of 
the  so-called  "moral"  theories  of  Atonement. 
Need  of  an  objective  Atonement.  Neither  by 
arousing  repentance  nor  by  awakening  thankful- 
ness can  Atonement  be  accomplished.  State- 
ment of  an  objective  theory  of  Atonement  through 
the  deed  of  a  suffering  servant  of  the  community. 
Human  instances.  Universality  and  verifiability 
of  atoning  deeds.  In  them  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity culminates. 

LECTURE  VII.  —  THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF 

LIFE 

Contrast  between  Buddhism  and  Christianity. 
Synthesis  of  the  Christian  ideas.  Resulting  esti- 

xlii 


INTRODUCTION 

mate  of  human  life  and  rule  for  the  service  and 
conduct  of  the  Community.     The  Christian  Will. 

LECTURE  VIII.  —  THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE 
CHRISTIAN  IDEAS 

Human  conditions  of  the  survival  of  Christianity 
as  a  faith  "upon  earth."  The  social  prospects  of 
the  near  and  remote  future.  The  power  of  the 
Christian  Ideas.  Relations  of  the  foregoing  study 
to  traditional  Christianity. 

PART  II.  — THE  REAL  WORLD  AND  THE 
CHRISTIAN   IDEAS 

LECTURE  IX.  —  THE  COMMUNITY  AND  THE  TIME- 
PROCESS 

The  neglected  article  in  Christian  theology,  and 
the  problem  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  community. 
Social  "pluralism,"  and  "the  compounding  of  con- 
sciousness." The  doctrine  of  the  community  not 
mystical.  The  time-process  as  essential  to  the 
existence  of  the  community.  Communities  of 
"hope"  and  of  "memory." 

LECTURE  X.  —  THE   BODY  AND  THE   MEMBERS 

The  Pauline  use  of  the  resurrection  as  a  means 
of  clarifying  the  consciousness  of  the  community. 
Modern  analogies;  communities  of  cooperation; 

xliii 


INTRODUCTION 

conditions    upon    which    loyalty    depends.     The 
community  as  an  interpretation. 

LECTURE  XI.  —  PERCEPTION,    CONCEPTION,  AND 
INTERPRETATION 

The  theory  of  knowledge  has  been  dominated 
in  the  past  by  the  contrast  between  Perception 
and  Conception.  Need  of  the  recognition  of  a 
third  cognitive  process.  Charles  Peirce's  doc- 
trine of  Interpretation  as  a  third  and  a  triadic 
cognitive  process,  essentially  social  in  its  type. 
Criticism  of  Bergson's  view  of  the  ideal  of  knowl- 
edge. Interpretation,  and  the  Metaphysics  of 
the  time-process. 

LECTURE    XII.  —  THE  WILL  TO  INTERPRET 

Interpretation  in  its  relation  to  Charles  Peirce's 
triadic  type  of  "Comparison."  Comparison  and 
interpretation  under  individual  and  social  condi- 
tions. Definition  of  a  "  Community  of  Interpreta- 
tion." Ideal  value  of  such  a  community.  Its 
form  as  the  principal  form  which  the  "life  of  the 
spirit"  assumes.  Examples,  and  generalization 
of  the  ideals  involved. 

LECTURE  XIII.  —  THE  WORLD  OF  INTERPRETA- 
TION 

Outline  of  a  form  of  idealism  determined  by  the 
use  of  Peirce's  definition  of  the  cognitive  process 

xliv 


INTRODUCTION 

of  interpretation.  Relation  to  Bergson  and  to 
Plato.  The  world  as  a  "Community  of  Interpre- 
tation." The  One  and  the  Many  in  such  a  world. 
The  relation  of  interpretation  to  Time.  Thesis : 
"The  universe  contains  its  own  interpreter."  The 
world  of  interpretation  as  not  "static."  Resulting 
general  doctrine  as  to  the  nature  and  the  unity 
of  the  "Spirit  of  the  Community." 


LECTURE  XIV.  —  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  SIGNS 

Definition  of  Peirce's  term  "Sign."  The  Signs 
as  a  third  and  triadic  category,  corresponding  to 
the  cognitive  process  of  interpretation.  The 
Doctrine  of  Signs  in  its  relation  to  "Radical 
Empiricism,"  and  to  Pragmatism.  The  primacy 
of  the  social  consciousness.  Loyalty  as  the  loving 
aspect  of  the  "will  to  interpret."  The  meta- 
physics of  the  saving  process.  The  irrevocable 
and  the  temporal. 


LECTURE  XV.  —  THE  HISTORICAL  AND  THE 
ESSENTIAL 

The  'relation  of  this  form  of  idealism  to  tradi- 
tional Christianity.  Pauline  Christianity  and 
our  doctrine  of  interpretation.  Final  statement 
of  our  "Problem  of  Christianity." 

xlv 


INTRODUCTION 

LECTURE  XVI.  —  SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

Teleology  and  Induction.  The  larger  teleolog- 
ical  aspects  of  the  natural  world.  The  Church 
and  the  sects;  the  Church  and  the  world;  the 
future  possibilities  for  religious  development. 
Practical  results  of  the  inquiry. 


xlvi 


I 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 


LECTURE  I 

THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

I  PROPOSE,  in  the  course  of  these  lec- 
tures, to  expound  and  to  defend  certain 
theses  regarding  the  vital  and  essential  char- 
acteristics of  the  Christian  religion.  In  the 
present  lecture,  which  must  be  wholly  con- 
fined to  the  work  of  preparing  the  way  for 
the  later  discussion,  I  shall  first  briefly  ex- 
plain my  title,  and  shall  state  what  I  mean 
by  "The  Problem  of  Christianity."  Then 
I  shall  name  certain  aspects  of  this  problem 
which  will  determine  the  whole  course  of  our 
inquiry ;  and  I  shall  indicate  the  nature  of 
the  method  which  I  intend  to  follow.  Since 
our  topic  is  so  wealthy  and  so  complex,  I 
must  begin  by  means  of  very  general  and 
summary  statements,  and  must  leave  to 
later  lectures  any  effort  to  deal  with  the  de- 
tails of  the  matters  that  I  shall  try  to  treat. 

Before  all  else,  let  me  say  one  word  as  to 
the   general   spirit   in   which   I   venture   into 

3 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this  so  familiar,  yet  so  mysterious  and  mo- 
mentous, department  of  the  philosophy  of 
religion. 

I 

The  present  day  is  one  marked  by  a  new 
awakening  of  interest  in  religious  experience, 
and  in  its  bearing  upon  life.  This  interest 
finds  expression  both  in  general  literature 
and  in  philosophical  discussion.  I  myself 
have  to  approach  all  such  topics  with  the 
interests  and  the  habits,  not  only  of  a  student 
of  philosophy,  but  of  one  already  committed 
to  a  certain  type  of  philosophical  opinions. 
This  fact  sets  inevitable  limits  to  the  sort 
of  contribution  that  I  can  make  to  the  in- 
quiry which  my  title  names.  Yet  the  nov- 
elty of  the  present  situation  of  human 
thought,  and  the  dramatic  interest  of  certain 
crises  through  which  opinion  has  recently 
been  passing,  give  to  even  the  least  construc- 
tive of  philosophical  students  numerous  op- 
portunities to  experience,  in  the  world  of 
religious  inquiry,  what  men  were  never  per- 
mitted to  experience  before.  The  philosoph- 

4 


THE    PROBLEM    AND    THE    METHOD 

ical  thought  of  our  day  is  affected  by  new  mo- 
tives ;  and  the  religious  life  of  the  world  is 
deepened  by  the  presence  of  efforts  which 
are  due  to  the  novel  and  far-reaching  social 
and  moral  problems  of  our  time.  All  these 
varied  influences  react  upon  one  another. 
The  student  of  philosophy  may  well  feel 
himself  moved,  by  recent  discussions,  to 
formulate  opinions  which  the  novelty  of  the 
life  of  other  men  may  haply  color,  even  when 
the  one  who  formulates  them  has  no  power, 
derived  from  his  own  inner  resources,  to 
invent. 

At  all  events,  any  sincere  seeker  for  truth 
may  hope  that,  however  remote  from  his 
own  powers  it  may  be  either  to  speak  with 
tongues  or  to  prophesy,  he  may  gain  new 
edification  from  his  brethren,  and  may,  in 
his  turn,  help  others  to  share  in  the  gifts  of 
the  spirit,  and  to  be  renewed  and  informed  by 
some  power  which  is  not  ourselves,  and  which 
seems,  in  this  happy  moment,  to  be  coming 
into  a  close  touch  with  the  deeper  thought 
and  the  better  aspiration  of  our  time, 

5 


THE    PROBLEM     OF    CHRISTIANITY 

With  such  a  "trembling  hope,"  -with 
such  a  hope  to  gain  some  advantage  from  the 
philosophical  as  well  as  from  the  religious 
movement  of  our  times,  —  I  myself  have 
for  a  good  while  endeavored  to  reconsider 
some  of  the  ancient  and  modern  problems  of 
the  philosophy  of  religion.  These  lectures 
will  embody  the  results  of  a  few  of  these  efforts 
towards  reconsideration.  Since  I  know  that 
so  many  other  inquirers  are  engaged  in  analo- 
gous tasks,  and  since  I  feel  sure  that  unity  of 
opinion  regarding  the  office  and  the  mean- 
ing of  religion  can  only  be  approached  through 
a  variety  of  efforts,  I  am  sure  that  my  own 
venture  is  no  mere  outcome  of  lonely  pre- 
sumption. 

II 

The  man  who  considers  the  interests  of 
religion  may  choose  any  one  of  three  atti- 
tudes toward  Christianity.  The  first  is  the 
familiar  attitude  of  the  expounder  and  de- 
fender of  some  form  of  the  Christian  faith, 
—  the  position  of  the  apologist  and  of  the 
Christian  teacher.  Even  this  one  mode  of 

6 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

dealing  with  the  tradition  of  Christianity  is 
capable  of  an  almost  endless  wealth  of  varia- 
tions. The  defender  of  the  faith  may  adhere  to 
this  or  to  that  branch  of  the  Christian  church. 
Or  perhaps  he  may  regard  tradition  from  the 
point  of  view  which  is  often  called  that  of 
modern  Liberal  Christianity.  Or  —  what- 
ever his  own  creed  may  be  —  he  may  lay 
the  principal  stress  upon  some  practical  task, 
such  as  that  of  a  pastor  or  of  a  missionary. 
In  yet  another  spirit,  he  may  emphasize 
technical  theological  questions.  Finally,  he 
may  make  the  history  of  the  church  or  of  the 
religion  his  main  interest.  Through  all  such 
variations,  as  they  appear  in  the  words  and 
the  hearing  of  religious  inquirers  and  teachers, 
there  may  run  a  tendency  that  unifies,  and 
so  characterizes  them  all,  --  the  positive  ten- 
dency, namely,  to  defend,  to  propagate,  and, 
in  one  way  or  another,  to  render  efficacious 
the  Christian  view  of  God,  of  the  world,  and 
of  human  destiny. 

Secondly,  however,  the  inquirer  who  deals 
with  religious  problems  may  take  the  position 

7 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  the  opponent  or  of  the  critic  of  Christianity, 
or  may  simply  regard  Christianity  with  a 
relative,  although  deliberately  thoughtful,  in- 
difference. Such  an  opponent,  or  such  an 
external  critical  observer  of  the  Christian 
world,  may  be  a  representative  of  some  other 
faith,  as  certain  of  the  recent  Oriental  critics 
of  Christian  doctrine  have  been ;  or,  in  other 
cases,  he  may  emphasize  some  aspect  of  the 
supposed  conflict  between  the  spirit  and 
the  results  of  modern  science,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  tradition  or  the  faith  of  Chris- 
tendom on  the  other.  At  a  very  recent  time 
in  the  history  of  European  discussion,  such 
attitudes  of  critical  hostility  or  of  thoughtful 
indifference  towards  Christianity  were  promi- 
nent factors  in  discussion,  and  occupied  a 
favored  place  in  the  public  mind.  Such  was 
the  case,  for  instance,  in  the  last  century, 
during  the  early  phases  of  the  controversies 
regarding  evolution,  especially  in  the  years 
between  1860  and  1880.  As  a  philosophical 
student  I  myself  was  trained  under  the 
influence  of  such  a  general  trend  of  public 

8 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

opinion.  These  attitudes  of  critical  indiffer- 
ence or  of  philosophical  hostility  towards  tradi- 
tional faith,  are  still  prominent  in  our  world 
of  religious  discussion ;  but  side  by  side  with 
them  there  have  recently  become  prominent 
tendencies  belonging  to  a  third  group,  — 
tendencies  which  seem  to  me  to  be,  in  their 
treatment  of  Christianity,  neither  predomi- 
nantly apologetic  nor  predominantly  hostile, 
nor  yet  at  all  indifferent.  This  third  group 
of  tendencies  has  suggested  to  me  the  title 
of  these  lectures.  I  wish  briefly  to  charac- 
terize this  group  of  ways  of  dealing  with 
Christianity,  and  to  indicate  its  contrast 
with  the  other  groups. 

Ill 

The  modern  student  of  the  problems  of 
religion  in  general,  or  of  Christianity  in  par- 
ticular, may  see  good  reason  for  agreeing  with 
the  apologists,  —  with  the  defenders  of  the 
faith,  —  in  attributing  to  Christianity,  viewed 
simply  as  a  product  of  human  evolution,  a 
central  importance  in  history,  in  the  religious 

9 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

experience  of  our  race,  and  in  the  endlessly 
renewed,  yet  very  ancient,  endeavor  of  man- 
kind to  bring  to  pass,  or  to  move  towards, 
the  salvation  of  man.  To  such  a  student  it 
may  have  become  clear :  —  first,  that  what- 
ever the  truth  of  religion  may  be,  the  office, 
the  task,  the  need  of  religion  are  the  most 
important  of  the  needs,  the  tasks,  the  offices 
of  humanity;  and,  secondly,  that  both  by 
reason  of  its  past  history  and  by  reason  of  its 
present  and  persistent  relation  to  the  religious 
experience  and  to  the  needs  of  men,  Chris- 
tianity stands  before  us  as  the  most  effective 
expression  of  religious  longing  which  the 
human  race,  travailing  in  pain  until  now,  has, 
in  its  corporate  capacity,  as  yet,  been  able 
to  bring  before  its  imagination  as  a  vision, 
or  has  endeavored  to  translate,  by  the  labor 
of  love,  into  the  terms  of  its  own  real  life. 

In  view  of  these  opinions,  such  a  student 
of  religion  may  tend  to  disagree  with  that 
spirit  of  critical  indifference  or  of  hostility 
towards  Christianity  which  has  characterized, 
and  still  characterizes,  one  of  the  two  groups 

10 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

of  religious  inquirers  whom  I  have  just 
mentioned.  With  the  apologists,  then,  and 
against  the  hostile  or  the  thoughtfully  indif- 
ferent critics  of  Christianity,  such  a  student 
may  stand,  as  one  to  whom  the  philosophy  of 
religion,  if  there  is  to  be  a  philosophy  of  reli- 
gion at  all,  must  include  in  its  task  the  office 
of  a  positive  and  of  a  deeply  sympathetic 
interpretation  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity, 
and  must  be  just  to  the  fact  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  is,  thus  far  at  least,  man's  most 
impressive  vision  of  salvation,  and  his  prin- 
cipal glimpse  of  the  home- land  of  the  spirit. 
Yet  such  a  student  may  still  see,  for  rea- 
sons which  I  need  not  at  the  outset  of  our 
quest  fully  state,  how  numerous  are  the 
questions  yet  to  be  answered,  the  reasonable 
doubts  yet  to  be  removed,  the  philosophical 
issues  yet  to  be  met,  the  historical  problems 
yet  to  be  solved,  the  tragedies  of  practical 
and  of  religious  life  yet  to  be  overcome,  the 
divisions  of  human  faith  yet  to  be  reunited, 
before  it  can  become  quite  clear  to  us,  if  it 
ever  is  to  become  clear,  just  what  ones  amongst 

11 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  apologists  are  indeed  defending  the  true 
Christian  faith,  and  wherein  the  truth  of 
that  faith,  if  it  be  true,  consists,  and  what  the 
essence  of  Christianity  is,  and  in  what  form, 
if  in  any  form,  Christianity  is  destined  to 
win  over  to  itself,  if  it  is  ever  to  win,  that 
troubled  human  world  which  it  has  illumined, 
but  whereto  it  has  thus  far  brought,  not  peace, 
but  a  sword. 

For  such  a  student,  who  is  neither  predomi- 
nantly an  apologist,  nor,  in  the  main,  any 
hostile  or  indifferent  critic,  the  topic  to  be 
chiefly  considered  in  his  own  reflections  con- 
cerning the  Christian  religion  would  be  ex- 
plicitly "The  Problem  of  Christianity." 

That  is,  such  a  student  would  approach 
this  religion  regarding  it,  at  least  provision- 
ally, not  as  the  one  true  faith  to  be  taught, 
and  not  as  an  outworn  tradition  to  be  treated 
with  an  enlightened  indifference,  but  as  a 
central,  as  an  intensely  interesting,  life-prob- 
lem of  humanity,  to  be  appreciated,  to  be 
interpreted,  to  be  thoughtfully  reviewed,  with 
the  seriousness  and  with  the  striving  for  rea- 

12 


THE    PROBLEM    AND    THE    METHOD 

sonableness  and  for  thoroughness  which  we 
owe  to  every  life-problem  wherewith  human 
destiny  is  inseparably  interwoven. 

Such  is  the  mode  of  approach  to  the  study 
of  Christianity  which  these  lectures  will 
adopt.  This  mode  of  approach  is  in  no  wise 
new,  but  it  is  the  one  which,  at  the  present 
moment,  in  my  opinion,  the  thoughtful  public 
of  our  day  both  most  desires  and  most  deeply 
needs.  And  despite  all  that  has  been  already 
done,  and  well  done,  in  the  direction  of  the 
sympathetic  philosophical  interpretation  of 
Christianity,  there  is  still  ample  work  yet  to 
do  to  make  this  third  mode  of  approach  to 
our  topic  more  effective  for  the  clarifying 
of  men's  insight  and  for  the  strengthening 
of  the  great  common  religious  interests. 

IV 

If  you  ask  in  what  way  our  problem  of 
Christianity  can  be,  at  this  stage,  provision- 
ally formulated,  I  may  give  you,  in  reply,  a 
first  glimpse  both  of  the  topics  that  we  are 
to  discuss,  and  of  the  general  method  to  be 

13 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

used  in  their  discussion,  by  employing  for  the 
moment  a  deliberately  inadequate  expression. 

What  I  am  minded  to  consider  in  these 
lectures  includes  some  part  of  an  answer  to 
the  question:  "In  what  sense,  if  in  any, 
can  the  modern  man  consistently  be,  in  creed, 
a  Christian  ? "  This  form  of  statement  indi- 
cates what  is  at  issue,  but  calls  in  a  most 
obvious  way  for  a  more  exact  definition  of 
our  plan.  Yet  the  very  vagueness  of  the 
outlook  which  these  words  suggest  will  help 
us  to  advance  almost  at  once  to  a  more  definite 
view  of  our  task. 

"In  what  sense  can  the  modern  man  con- 
sistently be,  in  creed,  a  Christian?"  You 
see,  in  any  case,  that  we  are  to  speak  of  some 
sort  of  creed,  and  of  the  consistency  with 
which  somebody  may  or  may  not  hold  that 
creed.  In  other  words,  our  own  "problem 
of  Christianity,"  in  these  lectures,  is  to  be 
one  that,  at  least  in  part,  has  to  do  with  the 
reasonable  consistency  of  certain  possible  reli- 
gious opinions.  That  is,  we  are  to  study  our 
topic  as  students  of  philosophy  view  their 

14 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

issues.  Our  problem  is,  in  itself  considered, 
and  apart  from  the  limitations  of  our  own 
mode  of  inquiry,  a  life-problem,  an  intensely 
practical,  a  passionately  interesting,  issue,  the 
problem  and  the  issue  of  a  religion.  But  we 
are  to  approach  this  problem  reflectively,  and 
are  to  take  account  of  interests  that  are 
not  only  those  of  religion,  but  also  those  of 
thought. 

Herein  lies  one  chosen  limitation  of  our 
enterprise,  in  that  we  are  not  undertaking  to 
contribute  directly  to  religion  itself,  but  only 
to  an  understanding  of  some  of  the  problems 
which  religious  creeds  suggest.  In  so  far, 
then,  vague  as  this  first  statement  of  our 
problem  is,  the  word  "  creed,"  and  the 
reference  to  the  creed  of  the  "modern 
man,"  serve  to  specify  in  some  measure 
the  range  of  our  investigation.  As  a  fact, 
I  shall  summarily  study  in  these  lectures  cer- 
tain aspects  of  the  traditional  creed  of  the 
Christian  Church. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  term  "modern 
man,"  as  just  used  in  my  provisional  state- 

15 


ment  of  our  problem,  has  a  meaning  whose 
deeper  relation  to  our  task  we  shall  hardly 
be  able  to  appreciate  justly  until  the  very 
close  of  this  series  of  studies.  "Can  the 
modern  man  consistently  hold  a  Christian 
creed  ? "  But  who,  you  will  ask,  is  this 
modern  man  ? 

Superficially  regarded,  the  conception  of 
the  "modern  man"  is  one  of  the  most  arbi- 
trary of  the  convenient  fictions  of  current 
discussion.  What  views  or  types  of  views 
are,  or  ought  to  be,  characteristic  of  the 
"modern  man"  hardly  any  of  us  will  wholly 
agree  in  defining.  And  if  there  is  any  typical 
"modern  man,"  he  would  seem,  at  first  sight, 
to  be  a  creature  of  a  day.  To-morrow  some 
other  sort  of  modern  man  must  take  his 
place.  And  of  the  modern  man  of  a  future 
century  we  now  cannot  even  know  the  race, 
— much  less,  it  would  seem,  the  religious  creed. 
What  creed  about  religion,  Christian  or  non- 
Christian,  now  befits  the  creature  of  a  day 
whom  our  own  young  century  calls  the  modern 
man,  —  why  need  we  inquire  ?  So  you  might 

16 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

comment  upon  the  statement  of  our  problem 
which  I  have  just  put  into  words. 

Yet  even  at  this  stage  of  the  discussion,  if 
you  consider  for  a  moment  the  meaning  that 
underlies  the  so  frequent  use  of  the  phrase 
"modern  man"  in  current  discussion,  and 
that  inspires  our  familiar  interest  in  the  sup- 
posed views  of  the  fictitious  being  called  the 
"  modern  man,"  you  will  see  that  even  this 
provisional  mode  of  formulating  the  problem 
of  Christianity  may,  after  all,  guide  us  to  a 
study  of  matters  which  are  not  fictitious  and 
which  have  a  bearing  on  permanent  religious 
concerns. 

For  by  the  "modern  man"  most  of  us  mean 
a  being  whose  views  are  supposed  to  be  in 
some  sense  not  only  the  historical  result,  but 
a  significant  summary,  of  what  the  ages  have 
taught  mankind.  The  term  "modern  man" 
condenses  into  a  word  the  hypothesis,  the 
postulate,  that  the  human  race  has  been  sub- 
ject to  some  more  or  less  coherent  process  of 
education.  The  modern  man  is  supposed  to 
teach  what  this  "education  of  the  human 
c  17 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

race"  has  taught  to  him.  The  ages  have 
their  lesson.  The  modern  man  knows  some- 
thing of  this  lesson. 

Such,  I  say,  is  the  hypothesis,  or  postulate, 
which  makes  the  phrase  "modern  man"  so 
attractive.  This  hypothesis,  this  postulate, 
may  be  true  or  false.  But  at  all  events  its 
meaning  is  deep  and  is  connected  with  a  cer- 
tain more  or  less  definite  view  of  human 
nature  and  of  the  course  of  time,  —  a  view 
which  has  played  its  own  part  in  the  history 
of  religion,  and  which,  in  particular,  has  well- 
known  relations  to  Christian  belief. 

We  all  remember  that  the  apostle  Paul 
conceived  human  history  as  including  a  pro- 
cess of  education.  As  "modern  man"  of 
his  own  time,  the  apostle  conceived  himself 
to  have  become  able  to  read  the  lesson  of 
this  process.  But  such  a  postulate,  whether 
true  or  false,  whether  asserted  in  Paul's  time 
or  in  our  own,  whether  Christian  in  its  for- 
mulation or  not,  includes  a  doctrine  that  will 
later  occupy  a  large  place  in  our  inquiry,  — 
the  doctrine  that  the  human  race,  taken  as  a 

18 


whole,  has  some  genuine  and  significant  spirit- 
ual unity,  so  that  its  life  is  no  mere  flow  and 
strife  of  opinions,  but  includes  a  growth  in 
genuine  insight. 

Our  customary  speech  about  the  modern 
man  implies  that,  in  the  light  of  this  common 
insight  gradually  attained  by  the  whole  race, 
our  creeds  should  be  tested  and,  if  need  be, 
revised..  The  "modern  man,"  defined  in  terms 
of  such  an  hypothesis,  is  conceived  as  the 
present  minister  of  this  treasury  of  wisdom 
which  the  ages  have  stored  and  which  our 
progress  is  still  increasing.  But,  from  such 
a  point  of  view,  to  ask  whether  the  modern 
man  can  consistently  be  in  creed  a  Christian, 
is  the  same  as  to  ask  how  Christianity,  con- 
sidered as  a  body  of  religious  beliefs,  is  related 
to  the  whole  lesson  of  religious  history,  and 
how  far  this  supposed  education  of  the  human 
race  has  been,  and  remains,  in  spirit,  in  mean- 
ing, in  its  true  interpretation,  a  Christian 
education. 

Only  at  the  close  of  our  entire  discussion 
shall  we  be  able  to  see  the  real  scope  of  this 

19 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

last  question,  and  its  deeper  relations  to  the 
problem  of  Christianity.  It  is  not  at  all 
my  intent  to  assume  at  this  stage  that  the 
postulate  just  stated  is  true,  namely,  the 
postulate  that  the  human  race  has  been  sub- 
ject to  some  genuine  process  of  education, 
that  the  ages  have  taught  man  some  more  or 
less  connected  lesson,  and  that  the  modern 
man  can  read  this  lesson.  This  first  provi- 
sional formulation  of  our  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity in  terms  of  the  relation  of  Christianity 
to  the  creed  of  the  modern  man,  is  intended 
to  direct  attention  at  once  to  two  aspects  of 
our  undertaking. 

First,  Christianity,  as  I  have  already 
pointed  out,  is,  historically  speaking,  one 
great  result  of  the  effort  of  mankind  to  find 
the  way  of  salvation,  and  is  apparently  thus 
far  the  most  impressive  and,  in  this  sense,  the 
greatest  result  of  this  very  effort.  Our  prob- 
lem of  Christianity  involves  some  attempt  to 
find  out  what  this  great  religion  most  essen- 
tially is  and  means,  what  its  most  permanent 
and  indispensable  features  are.  Secondly, 

20 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

our  problem  of  Christianity  is  the  problem 
of  estimating  these  most  permanent  and  indis- 
pensable features  of  Christianity  in  the  light 
of  what  we  can  learn  of  the  lesson  that  the 
religious  history  of  the  race,  viewed,  if  pos- 
sible, as  a  connected  whole,  has  taught  men. 

So  then,  to  state  our  problem  of  Christianity 
as  a  problem  about  whether  the  modern  man 
can  consistently  be,  in  creed,  a  Christian, 
is  to  use  language  that  seems  to  refer  to  the 
issues  of  the  passing  moment,  but  that  at 
once  leads  back  from  the  problem  of  the 
moment  to  the  problem  of  the  ages,  from  the 
modern  man  to  humanity  viewed  as  a  whole. 
More  carefully  restated,  then,  our  problem 
of  Christianity  is  this :  When  we  consider 
what  are  the  most  essential  features  of  Chris- 
tianity, is  the  acceptance  of  a  creed  that 
embodies  these  features  consistent  with  the 
lessons  that,  so  far  as  we  can  yet  learn,  the 
growth  of  human  wisdom  and  the  course  of 
the  ages  have  taught  man  regarding  religious 
truth  ? 

Our  problem  of  Christianity  is  intended  to 
21 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

be,  as  now  appears,  a  synthesis  of  certain 
philosophical  and  of  certain  historical  prob- 
lems. The  Christian  religion  furnishes  the 
topic.  This  religion  is  an  outcome  of  a  long 
history  and  it  includes  a  doctrine  about  life 
and  about  the  world.  We  are  to  estimate  this 
doctrine,  partly  in  the  light  of  its  history, 
partly  in  the  light  of  a  philosophical  study  of 
the  meaning  and  lesson  of  this  history. 


This  first  statement  of  our  problem  brings 
next  to  our  minds  what  is,  I  suppose,  the  most 
familiar  issue  which  any  one  has  to  meet  who 
undertakes  to  define  the  word  "  Christianity  " 
in  a  manner  suited  to  the  spirit  of  recent 
discussion.  This  issue  requires  here  a  brief 
preliminary  statement. 

Christianity  has  two  principal  and  contrast- 
ing characteristics.  It  is,  in  the  first  place, 
according  to  its  own  most  ancient  and  familiar 
tradition,  the  religion  which  was  taught  and 
was  first  lived  out,  by  an  individual  person, 
—  by  a  man  who  dwelt  among  men,  who 

22 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

counselled  a  mode  of  living,  who  aroused  and 
expressed  a  certain  spirit,  arid  who  taught 
that  in  this  spirit,  and  in  this  life,  the  way  of 
salvation  is  to  be  found  for  all  men.  This 
first  characteristic  of  Christianity  suggests  to 
all  of  us  a  view  regarding  our  problem  which 
has  been  very  greatly  emphasized  in  recent 
discussions  of  religion,  and  which  consists  in 
asserting  that,  however  deep  the  problem  of 
Christianity  may  be,  it  is,  in  its  essence,  an 
impressively  simple  problem. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the  grounds  of 
this  assertion.  They  are  well  known.  As  a 
religion  of  a  person,  appealing  to  persons 
regarding  the  goal  and  the  path  of  their  own 
lives,  Christianity  in  so  far  appears  as  an  art 
of  living,  as  a  counsel  for  the  attainment  of 
the  ends  of  human  existence.  Whatever 
may  be  your  opinions  or  your  doubts  about 
God  and  the  world  and  the  mysteries  of  our 
nature  and  our  destiny,  it  would  in  so  far 
seem  plausible  that,  as  a  modern  man,  you 
could  reasonably  estimate  both  the  Master 
and  his  reported  solution  of  the  practical 

23 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

problem  of  human  living,  and  that  you  could 
thus  decide  whether  or  no  you  can  be  in  creed 
a  Christian,  without  considering  any  very 
recondite  matter.  Your  decision,  "I  am 
in  creed  a  Christian,"  if,  as  a  modern  man, 
you  made  such  a  decision,  might  mean,  from 
this  point  of  view,  simply  this :  "  I  find  that 
the  example  and  the  personal  inspiration  of 
Jesus  are  for  me  of  supreme  value;  and  my 
experience  shows  me  that  the  Christian-  plan 
of  life  promises  to  me,  and  to  those  of  like 
mind  with  me,  the  highest  spiritual  success." 

When  thus  defined,  Christianity  would 
mean  the  teaching,  the  personal  example,  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Master.  If  one's  personal 
experience  taught  one  that  this  teaching,  this 
example,  and  this  spirit  are,  from  one's  own 
point  of  view,  the  solution  for  the  problem  of 
human  life,  one  both  could  be,  and  would  be, 
in  this  sense  of  the  word,  in  creed  a  Chris- 
tian. So  at  least  the  assertion  just  repeated 
teaches.  And  if  this  assertion  is  true,  our 
problem  is  essentially  a  simple  problem. 

So  far  I  have  merely  stated  a  well-known 

24 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

opinion.  But  whoever  thus  attempts  to  sim- 
plify the  problem  of  Christianity,  can  do  so 
only  by  either  ignoring  or  else  minimizing  the 
significance  of  the  second  of  the  two  char- 
acteristics of  the  Christian  religion,  whose 
existence  I  have  just  mentioned.  Histori- 
cally speaking,  Christianity  has  never  ap- 
peared simply  as  the  religion  taught  by  the 
Master.  It  has  always  been  an  interpretation 
of  the  Master  and  of  his  religion  in  the  light 
of  some  doctrine  concerning  his  mission,  and 
also  concerning  God,  man,  and  man's  salva- 
tion, —  a  doctrine  which,  even  in  its  simplest 
expressions,  has  always  gone  beyond  what  the 
Master  himself  is  traditionally  reported  to 
have  taught  while  he  lived. 

Whatever  the  reason  why  the  Master  and  the 
interpretation  of  his  person  and  of  his  teach- 
ing have  come  to  be  thus  contrasted,  it  is 
necessary  at  once  to  call  attention  to  the 
historical  fact  that  such  an  interpretation  of 
the  Master,  of  his  person,  and  of  his  mission, 
always  has  existed  ever  since  there  was  any 
Christian  religion  at  all. 

25 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  question  is  here  not  one  dependent 
upon  our  decision  as  to  the  trustworthiness 
or  the  authenticity  of  any  one  tradition. 
For  Christian  tradition,  in  all  its  forms,  has 
always  more  or  less  clearly  and  extensively 
distinguished  between  its  own  account  of  the 
Master,  of  his  sayings,  of  his  deeds,  of  his 
personal  character,  and  its  own  interpretation 
of  his  mission,  of  his  dignity,  and  of  the  divine 
purpose  that  his  life  accomplished.  The 
Master  himself  and  the  interpretation  of  his 
mission  have  thus  been  from  the  first  con- 
trasted. And  they  have  been  contrasted  by 
the  very  tradition  to  which  we  owe  the  report 
of  both  of  them.  This  fact  stands  in  the  way 
of  all  such  attempts  to  simplify  our  problem 
as  is  the  attempt  which  I  have  just  outlined. 

To  mention  one  of  the  very  earliest  forms  of 
this  contrast  between  religion  as  taught  by 
the  Master  and  its  later  expression.  Tradi- 
tion tells  us  about  sayings  in  which  the 
Master  set  forth  his  teaching.  It  also  tells 
us  of  his  fortunes,  —  of  his  suffering  and 
death.  Now,  however  it  was  that  his  teach- 

26 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

ings  were  related  to  the  causes  that  brought 
about  his  sufferings  and  death,  any  account 
of  these  his  fortunes  inevitably  contains  some 
indication  of  the  reasons  why,  according  to 
tradition,  "it  was  needful  that  Christ  should 
suffer."  But  these  reasons,  as  tradition  states 
them,  have  always  included  some  account  of 
the  Master's  office  and  of  his  mission,  —  an 
account  which  has  gone  beyond  what,  during 
his  life,  tradition  views  as  having  become 
explicit  and  manifest  to  his  disciples.  While 
the  Master  lived,  these  and  these  (so  the 
reports  run)  were  his  teachings.  In  these 
and  these  deeds  he  manifested  his  person  and 
spirit.  But  only  after  he  had  suffered  and 
died,  and  —  as  was  early  reported  —  had  risen 
again,  did  there  become  manifest,  according 
to  tradition,  what,  during  his  earthly  life, 
could  not  become  plain  even  to  those  who  were 
nearest  to  him. 

Thus,  I  repeat,  tradition  reports  the  matter, 
and  thus  it  contrasts,  from  the  very  begin- 
nings of  Christian  history,  the  Master  to 
whom  this  teaching  is  attributed  and  the  inter- 

27 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pretation  of  his  nature  and  mission,  which, 
according  to  the  same  tradition,  only  his 
sufferings,  his  death,  his  reported  resurrec- 
tion, and  the  coming  of  his  spirit  into  a  new 
unity  with  his  disciples,  could  begin  to  make 
manifest.  Thus  the  Master  and  the  inter- 
pretation early  began  to  be  distinguished. 
Thus  they  remain  distinguished  throughout 
Christian  history. 

And  thus,  for  the  fictitious  being  whom  I 
called  the  "modern  man"  —  for  him  also, 
in  case  he  chooses  to  consider  the  problem 
of  Christianity  at  all,  it  must  sooner  or  later 
become  manifest,  I  think,  that  he  cannot 
decide  whether  or  no  he  is  in  creed  a  Chris- 
tian, without  reflecting  upon  his  attitude, 
both  towards  the  Master  and  towards  the 
interpretations  which  history  has  given  to  the 
mission  of  the  Master.  To  ignore,  or  even 
to  minimize,  the  importance  of  these  inter- 
pretations, to  suppose  that  Christianity  can 
be  viewed  simply,  or  even  mainly,  as  the 
religion  taught  during  the  founder's  life  by 
the  Master  himself,  is,  I  think,  to  miss  the 

28 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

meaning  of  history  to  a  degree  unworthy  of 
the  highly  developed  historical  sense  which 
should  characterize  the  "modern  man." 

The  "modern  man"  may  have  to  decide, 
in  the  end,  that  he  is,  in  creed,  no  Christian 
at  all,  simply  because  he  may  have  to  reject 
some  or  all  of  the  interpretations  which  tra- 
dition has  asserted  to  be  true  of  the  mission 
and  of  the  divine  relations  of  the  Master. 
But  the  modern  man  will  be  unable,  in  my 
opinion,  to  be  just  to  his  own  historical  sense 
and  to  the  genuine  history  of  Christianity, 
unless  he  sees  that  the  Christian  religion 
always  has  been  and,  historically  speaking, 
must  be,  not  simply  a  religion  taught  by  any 
man  to  any  company  of  disciples,  but  always 
also  a  religion  whose  sense  has  consisted,  at 
least  in  part,  in  the  interpretation  which  later 
generations  gave  to  the  mission  and  the 
nature  of  the  founder.  The  interpretation 
may  involve  a  false  doctrine  of  life.  If  so, 
and  if  the  modern  man  thinks  so,  the 
modern  man  cannot  consistently  be  and 
remain  a  Christian.  But  I  do  not  believe 

29 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

that  the  modern  man,  when  he  considers  the 
lesson  of  the  history  of  Christianity,  can  long 
remain  content  with  the  view  that  Chris- 
tianity is,  in  its  principally  effective  features, 
historically  reducible  to  the  simple  statement 
of  what,  according  to  tradition,  the  Master 
taught  to  those  who,  while  he  was  alive, 
heard  his  words. 

VI 

Historically  speaking,  Christianity  has, 
then,  these  two  sharply  contrasted  aspects. 
I  have  said  that  the  issue  presented  by  this 
contrast  is  the  most  familiar  one  which,  at 
the  moment,  any  one  who  approaches  the 
problem  of  Christianity  has  to  meet.  You 
may  still  ask :  But  what  is  this  issue  ?  I 
answer :  It  is  the  issue  presented  by  the 
question :  Of  these  two  contrasting  aspects 
of  Christianity,  which  is,  not  only  histori- 
cally inevitable,  but  also  the  deeper,  the  more 
essential,  the  more  permanently  important 
aspect  ? 

Now  to  such  a  question  the  history  of 
30 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

Christianity,  necessary  as  it  is  in  preparing 
the  way  for  a  decision,  cannot  alone  furnish 
the  final  answer.  And  at  this  point  we  are 
already  able  to  give  a  reason  for  asserting 
that  not  only  history,  but  the  intrinsic  nature 
of  the  interests  which  are  involved,  will 
require  us,  in  our  later  lectures,  to  lay  our 
main  stress  upon  that  aspect  of  Christianity 
which,  in  the  order  of  time,  came  into  exist- 
ence later  than  the  Master's  own  reported 
teaching.  Let  me  state  this  reason  at  once, 
dogmatically  and  quite  inadequately,  but 
enough  to  indicate  the  course  that  we  are 
to  pursue. 

The  religion  of  the  Master,  as  he  is  said 
to  have  taught  it,  involves  many  counsels, 
addressed  to  the  individual  man,  regarding 
the  art  of  life  and  regarding  the  way  of 
entering  what  the  Master  called  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  But  these  counsels,  this  preach- 
ing of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  —  they  ap- 
peared, in  tradition,  as  stated  in  brief  outlines 
and  often  as  expressed  in  parables.  It  appears 
that,  at  least  for  the  multitudes  who  listened, 

31 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

often  for  the  disciples  themselves,  the  parables 
needed  interpretation,  and  that  the  sayings 
must  be  understood  in  the  light  of  an  insight 
which,  at  the  time  when  these  words  were 
first  uttered,  was  seldom  or  never  in  the 
possession  even  of  those  who  were  nearest 
to  the  Master. 

This  further  insight,  according  to  the  same 
tradition,  was  something  that,  as  was  held, 
would  come  whenever  the  Master's  spirit 
was  still  more  fully  revealed  to  his  disciples. 
Often  when  they  heard  their  Teacher  speaking 
most  plainly,  the  disciples,  as  we  are  told, 
did  not  yet  quite  understand  what  he  meant. 
And  now,  as  a  fact,  the  reported  sayings  and 
parables  of  the  founder  possess,  side  by  side 
with  their  so  well-known  directness  and 
simplicity,  certain  equally  well  known  but 
highly  problematic  traits  which,  in  all  the 
ages  that  have  since  elapsed,  have  led  to 
repeated  questions  as  to  what  the  Master 
meant  by  some  of  the  most  central  doctrines 
that  he  taught.  For  instance,  precisely  what 
he  taught  about  the  office  and  work  of  love, 

32 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

and  about  self-sacrifice,  and  about  casting 
off  all  care  for  the  morrow  —  such  things  have 
often  seemed  mysterious. 

And  precisely  these  more  problematic  fea- 
tures of  the  original  teachings  of  the  Master 
are  the  ones  to  which  the  later  Christian 
community  gave  interpretations  that  it  be- 
lieved to  be  due  to  the  guidance  of  the  Master's 
spirit,  and  that  it  therefore  inevitably  con- 
nected with  its  doctrine  regarding  his  own 
person  and  his  mission.  Since  these  later 
interpretations  have  to  do  with  matters  that 
the  original  sayings  and  parables,  so  far  as 
reported,  leave  more  or  less  problematic,  so 
as  to  challenge  further  inquiry ;  and  since  all 
these  more  problematic  matters  are  indeed 
of  central  importance  for  the  whole  estimate 
of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  we  may  indeed 
have  to  recognize  that  the  primitive  Chris- 
tianity of  the  sayings  of  the  Master  was  both 
enriched  and  deepened  by  the  interpretation 
which  the  Christian  community  gave  to  his 
person,  to  his  work,  and  to  his  whole  religion. 
I  believe  this  to  be  the  case. 
D  33 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Our  later  discussion  will  set  forth  some  of 
the  further  reasons  for  this  opinion.  These 
lectures  will  not  be  concerned  with  the  his- 
tory of  dogma;  and  all  our  discussions  con- 
cerning the  truth  of  Christianity  will  be 
guided  by  an  interest  rather  in  the  essentials 
of  religion  than  in  any  of  the  refinements 
of  theology.  But  it  will  be  one  of  my  theses 
that  the  essential  ideas  of  Christianity  include 
doctrines  which  indeed  supplement,  but  which 
at  the  same  time  in  spirit  fulfil,  the  view  of 
life  and  of  salvation  which  the  original  teach- 
ing of  the  Master  regarding  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  as  that  teaching  is  reported  by  tradi- 
tion, made  known  to  those  who  heard  him. 

It  will  help  our  enterprise  if,  at  this  point, 
I  simply  state  what,  in  my  opinion,  are  the 
Christian  ideas  which  both  the  history  of 
Christianity,  and  the  intrinsic  importance  of 
the  religious  concerns  involved,  will  make  it 
most  needful  for  us  to  consider,  for  the  sake 
of  a  fair  comprehension  of  the  problem  of 
Christianity.  These  central  Christian  ideas, 
as  I  shall  here  name  them  and  shall  later 

34 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

discuss  them,  are  three.  They  are  all  of 
them  ideas  that  came  to  the  mind  of  the 
Christian  world  in  the  course  of  later  efforts 
to  explain  the  true  meaning  of  the  original 
teaching  regarding  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
The  Christian  community  regarded  them  as 
due  to  the  guidance  of  the  founder's  spirit; 
but  was  also  aware  that,  when  they  first  came 
to  light,  they  involved  new  features,  which 
the  reported  sayings  and  parables  of  the 
Master  had  not  yet  made  so  explicit  as  they 
afterwards  became.  The  Spirit  which,  as  the 
early  church  came  to  believe,  was  in  due  time 
to  guide  the  faithful  to  all  truth,  was  held  to  be 
the  interpreter  who  revealed  these  new  things. 
Our  own  main  interest  is  here  not  in  the  theo- 
logical aspect  of  the  development  which  led 
to  these  ideas.  What  concerns  us  is  that 
these  ideas  actually  appeared  in  the  Chris- 
tian community  as  an  interpretation  of  what 
the  founder  had  meant,  while,  as  we  shall  later 
more  clearly  see,  they  came  to  constitute 
vital  and  essential  portions  of  the  religious 
message  which  Christianity  had  for  mankind. 

35 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


VII 

We  may  be  aided  in  our  selection  of  these 
three  central  ideas  by  mentioning  the  fact 
that  certain  features  of  the  founder's  reported 
teaching  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  have 
generally  seemed,  to  later  ages,  to  stand  in 
need  of  an  interpretation  which  the  founder's 
recorded  words  did  not  wholly  furnish.  The 
three  ideas  here  in  question  were  first  devel- 
oped in  the  mind  of  the  Christian  community 
in  the  midst  of  the  early  efforts  to  reach  this 
further  interpretation  of  what  the  founder 
had  meant  by  the  words  that  were  attributed 
to  him  by  tradition. 

The  Master's  teachings  are,  for  the  most 
part,  directed,  in  his  reported  sayings,  to 
individual  men,  —  either  to  some  one  indi- 
vidual viewed  as  a  typical  man  ("Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself"),  or  to  com- 
panies of  individuals  viewed  as  of  such  nature 
that  the  same  counsel  applies  equally  to  any 
or  to  all  of  these  individuals  alike  ("Blessed 

36 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

are  the  meek ; "  "Be  ye  perfect  as  your  Father 
in  heaven  is  perfect").  Meanwhile,  the  Mas- 
ter freely  speaks  of  what  he  calls  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven.  And  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
appears,  on  its  very  face,  to  be  some  sort  of 
social  order,  some  sort  of  collective  life,  some 
kind  of  community.  Yet  the  reported  sayings 
do  not,  when  taken  by  themselves,  make 
perfectly  explicit  what  that  social  order,  what 
that  community,  is  to  which  the  name  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  intended  to  apply.  Tradi- 
tion represents  the  earliest  interpretation  of 
the  term  by  the  Disciples  of  Christ  themselves, 
while  he  was  yet  speaking  to  them,  as,  in 
their  own  minds,  more  or  less  doubtful.  Was 
the  Master's  kingdom  to  be  of  this  world,  or 
of  some  other  ?  Was  it  to  be  a  more  or  less 
visible  political  social  order  ?  Was  it  to  be 
wholly  a  matter  of  the  inner  spiritual  lives  of 
many  outwardly  separate  individuals  ("The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  you"). 

Plainly,  whatever  the  doctrine  of  the  King- 
dom really  meant,  its  first  expression  was  such 
as  to  call  for  a  further  development,  and  for  a 

37 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

richer  interpretation  than  any  one  of  the  par- 
ables of  the  Kingdom,  as  originally  reported, 
gave  to  it.  The  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  was 
at  once  simple,  direct,  personal,  and  deep, 
mysterious,  prophetic  of  something  yet  to  be 
disclosed.  And  herewith  we  at  once  remind 
ourselves  how  the  Christian  community, 
living,  as  it  believed,  in  and  through  the  spirit 
of  the  Master,  was  early  led  to  develop  the 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  into  the  doctrine  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

When,  however,  we  consider,  not  the  his- 
torical accidents  and  not  the  external  show, 
but  rather  the  deeper  spirit  of  this  doctrine 
about  the  Christian  Church,  we  are  led  to  look 
beyond,  or  beneath,  all  the  special  dogmas  and 
forms  in  which  the  opinion  and  the  practice 
of  the  historical  Christian  Church  has  found 
in  various  ages  a  manifold  and  often  a  very 
imperfect  expression.  And  we  are  also  led 
to  state,  as  the  inner  and  deeper  sense  of  the 
whole  process  of  the  history  of  the  Church, 
the  first  of  the  three  ideas  of  Christianity,  — 
which  will  hereafter  guide  our  study. 

38 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

And  we  may  here  state  this  first  Christian 
idea  in  our  own  words  thus,  namely,  as  the 
doctrine  that  "The  salvation  of  the  individual 
man  is  determined  by  some  sort  of  membership 
in  a  certain  spiritual  community,  —  a  religious 
community  and,  in  its  inmost  nature,  a  divine 
community,  in  whose  life  the  Christian  vir- 
tues are  to  reach  their  highest  expression  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Master  is  to  obtain  its  earthly 
fulfilment."  In  other  words :  There  is  a 
certain  universal  and  divine  spiritual  com- 
munity. Membership  in  that  community  is 
necessary  to  the  salvation  of  man. 

I  propose,  in  our  later  lectures,  to  consider, 
not  the  history  and  not,  in  any  detail,  the 
dogmas  of  the  Christian  Church,  but  the  mean- 
ing, the  foundation,  the  truth  of  this  first  of 
our  three  Christian  ideas,  —  the  idea  of  the 
divinely  significant  spiritual  community  of  the 
faithful,  —  the  idea  that  such  a  community 
exists,  and  is  needed,  and  is  an  indispensable 
means  of  salvation  for  the  individual  man,  and 
is  the  fitting  realm  wherein  alone  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  which  the  Master  preached  can 

39 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

find  its  expression,  and  wherein  alone  the 
Christian  virtues  can  be  effectively  practised. 
We  are  to  ask,  What  is  the  foundation  of 
this  idea  ?  What  does  it  mean  ?  In  essence, 
is  it  a  true  idea  ?  In  what  sense  does  it 
retain  its  meaning  and  its  value  to-day,  and 
for  the  modern  man,  and  (in  so  far  as  we  can 
foresee)  in  what  way  is  it  destined  to  guide 
the  future?  This  inquiry  will  constitute  an 
essential  part  of  our  study  of  the  Problem  of 
Christianity. 

The  mention  of  this  first  of  the  three  Chris- 
tian ideas  leads  me  at  once  to  the  mention  of 
two  other  ideas.  These  two  stand  in  the 
closest  correlation  with  this  first  idea  and 
with  each  other,  and  share  with  the  first  a 
character  to  which,  as  we  shall  later  see,  the 
mystery,  the  elementally  human  significance, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  problem  of  Christianity 
are  all  of  them  due.  Both  of  these  ideas  grew 
up  because,  in  the  preaching  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  the  Master  appealed  to  the  individ- 
ual man,  but  left  certain  aspects  of  this  ap- 
peal mysterious,  so  that  the  question,  What 

40 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

is  the  nature  and  the  worth  of  the  individual 
man  ?  was  left  a  matter  of  serious  heart 
searching. 

The  second  of  our  three  ideas  seems  at 
first  sharply  contrasted  with  the  gentle  and 
hopeful  spirit  of  some  of  the  Master's  best- 
known  and  most-loved  statements.  We  shall 
later  see,  however,  the  deeper  connection  of 
this  second  idea  with  what  the  Master  taught 
about  the  individual  man.  It  is  the  grave, 
yes,  the  tragic  idea  that  can  be  stated,  in  the 
form  of  a  doctrine,  thus:  "The  individual 
human  being  is  by  nature  subject  to  some 
overwhelming  moral  burden  from  which,  if 
unaided,  he  cannot  escape."  This  burden  is 
at  once  a  natural  inheritance  and  a  burden 
of  personal  guilt.  Both  because  of  what  has 
technically  been  called  original  sin,  and  be- 
cause of  the  sins  that  he  himself  has  com- 
mitted, the  individual  is  doomed  to  a  spiritual 
ruin  from  which  only  a  divine  intervention 
can  save  him.  The  individual,  as  Paul  first 
stated  the  case,  is,  apart  from  divine  grace, 
"dead  in  trespasses  and  sins."  His  salvation, 

41 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

if  it  occurs  at  all,  must  involve  a  quickening, 
—  a  raising  of  the  dead. 

Thus  tragic,  thus  strangely  opposed  in  seem- 
ing to  the  more  comforting  and  hopeful  of 
the  parables  of  the  founder,  thus  also  very 
sharply  contrasted  with  some  of  our  now  most 
favorite  modern  doctrines  concerning  the  moral 
dignity  of  human  nature,  and  concerning  the 
course  of  the  natural  evolution  of  man  from 
lower  to  higher  spiritual  stages,  —  thus  para- 
doxical is  the  second  of  the  three  Christian 
ideas  that,  in  our  latter  discussion,  we  shall 
emphasize.  The  first  of  the  three  central 
ideas  involves,  as  we  just  saw,  the  assertion 
that  the  way  of  salvation  lies  in  the  union  of 
the  individual  with  a  certain  universal  spiritual 
community.  The  second  of  these  ideas,  the 
idea  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual,  in- 
cludes the  doctrine  that  of  himself,  and  apart 
from  the  spiritual  community  which  the  divine 
plan  provides  for  his  relief,  the  individual  is 
powerless  to  escape  from  his  innate  and  ac- 
quired character,  the  character  of  a  lost  soul,  or, 
in  Paul's  phrase,  of  a  dead  man,  who  is  by  in- 

42 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

heritance  tainted,  and  is  also  by  his  own  deeds 
involved  in  hopeless  guilt.  You  may  well 
ask :  Can  the  modern  man  make  anything 
of  such  an  idea  ?  This  question,  as  we  shall 
see,  is  a  very  significant  part  of  our  problem 
of  Christianity. 

The  third  leading  idea  of  Christianity  which 
we  shall  have  to  consider  is  the  one  that  many 
modern  minds  regard  as  the  strangest,  as  the 
most  hopelessly  problematic,  of  the  three.  It 
is  also  the  one  whose  relation  to  the  original 
teachings  of  the  Master  seems  most  problem- 
atic. It  is  the  idea  expressed  by  the  asser- 
tion :  The  only  escape  for  the  individual, 
the  only  union  with  the  divine  spiritual  com- 
munity which  he  can  obtain,  is  provided  by 
the  divine  plan  for  the  redemption  of  man- 
kind. And  this  plan  is  one  which  includes 
an  Atonement  for  the  sins  and  for  the  guilt 
of  mankind.  This  atonement,  and  this  alone, 
makes  possible  the  entrance  of  the  individual 
into  a  saving  union  with  the  divine  spiritual 
community,  and  reveals  the  full  meaning  of 
what  the  Master  meant  by  the  Kingdom  of 

43 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Heaven.  Without  atonement,  no  salvation. 
And  the  divine  plan  has  in  fact  provided  and 
accomplished  the  atoning  work. 

VIII 

The  idea  of  the  spiritual  community  in 
union  with  which  man  is  to  win  salvation,  the 
idea  of  the  hopeless  and  guilty  burden  of 
the  individual  when  unaided  by  divine  grace, 
the  idea  of  the  atonement,  —  these  are,  for 
our  purposes,  the  three  central  ideas  of  Chris- 
tianity. Of  these  ideas  the  second,  and  still 
more  the  third,  seems,  at  first  sight,  especially 
foreign  to  the  modern  mind,  as  most  of  us 
conceive  that  mind;  and  all  three  appear  to 
be  due  to  interpretations  of  the  mind  of  the 
Master  which  came  into  existence  only  after 
his  earthly  period  of  teaching  had  ceased. 
The  discussion  of  the  meaning  and  the  truth 
of  each  of  these  three  ideas  is  to  constitute 
our  proposed  contribution  to  the  Problem  of 
Christianity.  The  justification  of  our  enter- 
prise lies  in  the  fact  that,  familiar  as  these 
three  ideas  are,  they  are  still  almost  wholly 

44 


THE  PROBLEM  AND  THE  METHOD 

misunderstood,  both  by  the  apologists  who 
view  them  in  the  light  of  traditional  dogmas, 
and  by  the  critics  who  assail  the  letter  of 
dogmas,  but  who  fail  to  grasp  the  spirit. 

We  have  in  outline  stated  how  we  define 
this  Problem  of  Christianity.  We  have  enu- 
merated three  ideas  which  we  are  to  regard  as 
the  essential  ideas  of  Christianity.  We  have 
indicated  the  method  that  we  are  to  follow 
in  discussing  these  ideas  and  in  grasping  and 
in  attempting  to  clarify  our  problem.  Our 
method  is  to  consist  in  an  union  of  an  effort 
to  read  the  lesson  of  history  with  an  effort  to 
estimate,  upon  a  reasonable  basis,  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  Christian  religion.  Already, 
even  in  our  opening  statement,  we  have  en- 
deavored to  illustrate  this  union  of  historical 
summary  with  philosophical  reflection. 


45 


II 

THE  IDEA  OF  THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 


LECTURE  II 

THE  IDEA  OF  THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 

IN  accordance  with  the  plan  set  forth  at 
the  close  of  our  first  lecture,  we  begin  our 
study  of  the  Problem  of  Christianity  by  a 
discussion  of  the  Christian  idea  of  the  Church, 
and  of  its  universal  mission. 

I 

The  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  as  characterized 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  in  the  para- 
bles, is  something  that  promises  to  the  indi- 
vidual man  salvation,  and  that  also  possesses, 
in  some  sense  which  the  Master  left  for  the 
future  to  make  clearer,  a  social  meaning.  To 
the  individual  the  doctrine  says,  "The  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  within  you."  But  when  in 
the  end  the  Kingdom  shall  come,  the  will  of 
God,  as  we  learn,  is  to  be  done  on  earth  as  it 
is  in  heaven.  And  therewith  the  kingdoms 
of  this  world  —  the  social  order  as  it  now  is 
and  as  it  naturally  is  —  will  pass  away.  Then 

E  49 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

there  will  come  to  pass  the  union  of  the 
blessed  with  their  Father,  and  also,  as  appears, 
with  one  another,  in  the  heavenly  realm  which 
the  Father  has  prepared  for  them. 

This  final  union  of  all  who  love  is  not  de- 
scribed at  length  in  tiie  recorded  words  of  the 
Master.  A  religious  imagery  familiar  to  those 
who  heard  the  parables  that  deal  with  the 
end  of  the  world  was  freely  used;  and  this 
imagery  gives  us  to  understand  that  the  con- 
summation of  all  things  will  unite  in  a  heav- 
enly community  those  who  are  saved.  But 
the  organization,  the  administration,  the  ranks 
and  dignities,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  the 
Master  does  not  describe. 

When  the  Christian  Church  began,  in  the 
Apostolic  Age,  to  take  visible  form,  the  idea 
of  the  mission  of  the  Church  expressed  the 
meaning  which  the  Christian  community  came 
to  attach  to  the  social  implications  of  the 
founder's  doctrine.  What  was  merely  hinted 
in  the  parables  now  became  explicit.  The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  to  be  realized  in 
and  through  and  for  the  Church,  —  in  the 

50 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

fellowship  of  the  faithful  who  constituted 
the  Church  as  it  was  on  earth ;  through  the 
divine  Spirit  that  was  believed  to  guide  the 
life  of  the  Church ;  and  for  the  future  ex- 
perience of  the  Church,  whenever  the  end 
should  come,  and  whenever  the  purpose  of 
God  should  finally  be  manifested  and  accom- 
plished. 

Such,  in  brief,  was  the  teaching  of  the  early 
Christian  community.  Unquestionably  this 
teaching  added  something  new  to  the  original 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom.  But  this  addition, 
as  we  shall  later  see,  was  more  characteristic 
of  the  new  religion  than  was  any  portion  of 
the  sayings  that  tradition  attributed  to  the 
Master,  and  was  as  inseparable  from  the  es- 
sence of  primitive  Christianity  as  the  belief 
of  the  disciples  themselves  was  inseparable 
from  their  very  earliest  interpretations  of  the 
person  and  the  mission  of  their  leader. 

It  is  useless,  I  think,  for  the  most  eager 
defender  and  expounder  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity in  its  purity  to  ignore  the  fact  that, 
whatever  else  the  Christian  religion  involves, 

51 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

some  sort  of  faith  or  doctrine  regarding  the 
office  and  the  meaning  of  the  Church  was  an 
essential  part  of  the  earliest  Christianity  that 
existed  after  the  founder  had  passed  from 
earth. 

Since  our  problem  of  Christianity  involves 
the  study  of  the  most  vital  Christian  ideas, 
how  can  we  better  begin  our  task  than  by 
asking  what  this  idea  of  the  Church  really 
means,  and  what  value  and  truth  it  possesses  ? 
Not  only  is  such  a  beginning  indeed  advisable, 
but,  at  first  sight,  it  seems  especially  adapted 
to  enable  us  to  use  the  manifold  and  abun- 
dant aids  which,  as  we  might  suppose,  the 
aspirations  of  all  Christian  ages  would  fur- 
nish for  our  guidance. 

For,  as  you  may  naturally  ask,  is  not  the 
history  of  Christianity,  viewed  in  at  least 
one  very  significant  way,  simply  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church  ?  Is  not  the  idea  of 
the  Church,  then,  not  only  essential  and  potent, 
but  one  of  the  most  familiar  of  the  religious 
ideas  of  Christendom  ?  Must  not  the  con- 
sciousness of  all  really  awakened  Christian 

52 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

communities  whose  creeds  are  recorded  stand 
ready  to  help  the  inquirer  who  wants  to  in- 
terpret this  idea  ?  May  we  not  then  begin 
this  part  of  our  enterprise  with  high  hope, 
sure  that,  as  we  attempt  to  grasp  and  to  esti- 
mate this  first  of  our  three  essential  Christian 
ideas,  we  shall  have  the  ages  of  Christian 
development  as  our  helpers  ?  So,  I  repeat, 
you  may  very  naturally  ask.  But  the  answer 
to  this  question  is  not  such  as  quite  fulfils 
the  hope  just  suggested. 

II 

As  a  fact,  the  idea  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
Christian  Church  constitute  indeed  a  vital  and 
permanent  part  of  Christianity ;  and  a  study 
of  this  idea  is  a  necessary,  and  may  properly 
be  the  first,  part  of  our  inquiry  into  the  Prob- 
lem of  Christianity. 

But  we  must  not  begin  this  inquiry  without 
a  due  sense  of  its  difficulty.  We  must  remem- 
ber at  the  very  outset  the  fact  that  all  the 
Christian  ages,  up  to  the  present  one,  unite, 
not  to  present  to  us  any  finished  interpreta- 

53 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

tion  of  the  idea  of  the  Church,  but  rather  to 
prove  that  this  idea  is  as  fluent  in  its  expres- 
sion as  it  is  universal  in  its  aim ;  and  is  as 
baffling,  by  reason  of  the  conflicts  of  its  inter- 
preters, as  it  is  precious  in  the  longings  that 
constitute  its  very  heart. 

If  this  idea  comforts  the  faithful,  it  is  also 
a  stern  idea;  for  it  demands  of  those  who 
accept  it  the  resolute  will  to  face  and  to  con- 
tend against  the  greatest  of  spiritual  obstacles, 
namely,  the  combined  waywardness  of  the 
religious  caprices  of  all  Christian  mankind. 
For  the  true  Church,  as  we  shall  see,  is  still 
a  sort  of  ideal  challenge  to  the  faithful,  rather 
than  an  already  finished  institution,  —  a  call 
upon  men  for  a  heavenly  quest,  rather  than 
a  present  possession  of  humanity.  "Create 
me,"  —  this  is  the  word  that  the  Church, 
viewed  as  an  idea,  addresses  to  mankind. 

Meanwhile  the  contrast  between  the  letter 
and  the  spirit  of  a  fundamental  doctrine  is 
nowhere  more  momentous  and  more  tragic 
than  in  case  of  the  doctrine  of  the  nature 
and  the  office  of  the  Christian  Church.  The 

54 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

spirit  of  this  doctrine  consists,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  in  the  assertion  that  there  is  a 
certain  divinely  ordained  and  divinely  signifi- 
cant spiritual  community,  to  which  all  must 
belong  who  are  to  attain  the  true  goal  of  life ; 
that  is,  all  who,  to  use  the  distinctly  religious 
phraseology,  are  to  be  saved. 

How  profoundly  reasonable  are  the  con- 
siderations upon  which  this  doctrine  is  based 
we  have  yet  to  see,  and  can  only  estimate  in 
the  light  of  a  due  study  of  all  the  essential 
Christian  ideas.  To  my  own  mind  these  con- 
siderations are  such  as  can  be  interpreted 
and  defended  without  our  needing,  for  the 
purposes  of  such  interpretation  and  defence, 
any  acceptance  of  traditional  dogmas.  For 
these  considerations  are  based  upon  human 
nature.  They  have  to  do  with  interests 
which  all  reasonable  men,  whether  Christian 
or  non-Christian,  more  or  less  clearly  recog- 
nize, in  proportion  as  men  advance  to  the 
higher  stages  of  the  art  of  life. 

The  spirit,  then,  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Church  is  as  reasonable  as  it  is  universal.  It 

55 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

is  Christian  by  virtue  of  features  which,  when 
once  understood,  also  render  it  simply  and 
impressively  human.  This,  I  say,  is  what 
our  entire  study  of  the  three  Christian  ideas 
will,  in  the  end,  if  I  am  right,  bring  to  our 
attention. 

Ill 

But  the  letter  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Church 
has  been  subject  to  fortunes  such  as,  in  various 
ways  and  degrees,  attend  the  visible  embodi- 
ment of  all  the  great  ideals  of  humanity ;  only 
that,  as  I  have  just  said,  the  resulting  tragedy 
is,  in  no  other  case  in  which  spirit  and  letter 
are  in  conflict,  greater  than  in  this  case. 

In  general  the  risks  of  temporary  disaster 
which  great  ideals  run  appear  to  be  directly 
proportioned  to  the  value  of  the  ideals.  The 
disasters  may  be  destined  to  give  place  to 
victory ;  but  great  truths  bear  long  sorrows. 
What  humanity  most  needs,  it  most  persist- 
ently misunderstands.  The  spirit  of  a  great 
ideal  may  be  immortal ;  its  ultimate  victory, 
as  we  may  venture  to  maintain,  may  be  pre- 
56 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

determined  by  the  very  nature  of  things; 
but  that  fact  does  not  save  such  an  ideal  from 
the  fires  of  the  purgatory  of  time.  Its  very 
preciousness  often  seems  to  insure  its  repeated, 
its  long-enduring,  effacement.  The  comfort 
that  it  would  bring  if  it  were  fully  understood 
and  accepted  may  make  all  the  greater  the 
sorrow  of  a  world  that  still  waits  for  the 
light. 

In  case  of  the  history  of  the  essential  idea 
of  the  Church,  the  complications  of  dogma,  the 
strifes  of  the  sects,  the  horrors  of  the  religious 
wars  in  former  centuries,  the  confusions  of 
controversy  in  our  own  day,  must  not  make 
us  despair.  Such  is  the  warfare  of  ideals. 
Such  is  this  present  world. 

Least  of  all  may  we  attempt,  as  many  do, 
to  accuse  this  or  that  special  tendency  or 
power  in  the  actual  Church,  past  or  present, 
of  being  mainly  responsible  for  this  failure 
to  appreciate  the  ideal  Church.  The  defect 
lies  deeper  than  students  of  such  problems 
usually  suppose.  Human  nature,  —  not  any 
one  party,  —  yes,  the  very  nature  of  the  pro- 

57 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

cesses  of  growth  themselves,  and  not  any 
particular  form  of  religious  or  of  moral  error, 
must  be  viewed  as  the  source  of  the  principal 
tragedies  of  the  history  of  all  the  Christian 
ideals. 

In  fact,  the  true  idea  of  the  Church  has  not 
been  forsaken ;  it  is,  in  a  very  real  sense,  still 
to  be  found,  or  rather,  to  be  created.  We 
have  to  do,  in  this  case,  not  so  much  with 
apostasy  as  with  evolution.  To  be  sure,  at 
the  very  outset,  the  ideal  of  the  Church  was 
seen  afar  off  through  a  glass,  darkly.  The 
well-known  apocalyptic  vision  revealed  the 
true  Church  as  the  New  Jerusalem  that 
was  yet  to  come  down  from  heaven.  The 
expression  of  the  idea  was  left,  by  the  early 
Church,  as  a  task  for  the  ages.  The  spirit 
of  that  idea  was  felt  rather  than  ever  ade- 
quately formulated,  and  the  vision  still  re- 
mains one  of  the  principal  grounds  and  sources 
of  the  hope  of  humanity. 


58 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

IV 

Such  doctrines,  and  such  conflicts  of  spirit 
and  letter,  cannot  be  understood  unless  our 
historical  sense  is  well  awakened.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  cannot  be  understood  merely 
through  a  study  of  history.  The  values  of 
ideals  must  be  ideally  discerned.  If  viewed 
without  a  careful  and  critical  reflection,  the 
history  of  such  processes  as  the  development 
of  the  idea  of  the  Church  presents  a  chaos  of 
contending  motives  and  factions.  Apart  from 
some  understanding  of  history,  all  critical 
reflection  upon  this  idea  remains  an  unfruitful 
exercise  in  dialectics.  We  must  therefore 
first  divide  our  task,  and  then  reunite  the 
results,  hoping  thereby  to  win  a  connected 
view  of  the  ideal  that  constitutes  our  present 
problem. 

Let  us,  then,  first  point  out  certain  motives 
which,  when  considered  quite  apart  from  any 
specifically  Christian  ideas  or  doctrines,  may 
serve  to  make  intelligible  the  ideal  which  is 
here  in  question.  Then  let  us  sketch  the  way 

59 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  which  the  idea  of  the  Christian  Church 
first  received  expression. 

This  first  expression  of  the  idea  of  the 
Church,  as  we  shall  find,  transformed  the 
very  teaching  which  it  most  eloquently  reen- 
forced  and  explained,  namely,  the  teaching 
which  the  parables  of  the  founder  had  left 
for  the  faith  of  the  Christian  community  to 
interpret.  This  was  the  teaching  about  the 
office  and  the  saving  power  of  Christian  love. 
For  such,  as  we  shall  see,  was  the  first  result 
of  the  appearance  of  the  idea  of  the  Church 
in  Christian  history. 

By  sketching,  then,  some  non-Christian 
developments  and  then  a  stage  of  early 
Christian  life,  we  shall  get  two  aspects  of  the 
ideal  of  the  universal  community  before  us. 
Hereby  we  shall  not  have  reached  any  solu- 
tion of  our  problem  of  Christianity ;  but  we 
shall  have  brought  together  in  our  minds  cer- 
tain Christian  and  certain  non-Christian  ideas 
whose  interrelations  will  hereafter  prove  to 
be  of  the  utmost  importance  for  our  whole 
enterprise. 

60 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

Next  in  order,  then,  comes  a  brief  review 
of  some  of  those  motives  which,  apart  from 
Christian  history  and  Christian  doctrine, 
make  the  ideal  of  the  universal  community 
a  rationally  significant  ideal.  These  motives, 
in  their  turn,  are  of  two  kinds.  Some  of  them 
are  motives  derived  from  the  natural  history 
of  mankind.  Some  of  them  are  distinctively 
ethical  motives.  We  must  become  acquainted, 
through  a  very  general  summary,  with  both 
of  these  sorts  of  motives.  Both  sorts  have 
interacted.  The  nature  of  man  as  a  social 
being  suggests  certain  ethical  ideals.  These 
ideals,  in  their  turn,  have  modified  the  natural 
history  of  society. 


As  an  essentially  social  being,  man  lives  in 
communities,  and  depends  upon  his  com- 
munities for  all  that  makes  his  civilization 
articulate.  His  communities,  as  both  Plato 
and  Aristotle  already  observed,  have  a  sort 
of  organic  life  of  their  own,  so  that  we  can 
compare  a  highly  developed  community,  such 

61 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

as  a  state,  either  to  the  soul  of  a  man  or  to  a 
living  animal.  A  community  is  not  a  mere 
collection  of  individuals.  It  is  a  sort  of  live 
unit,  that  has  organs,  as  the  body  of  an  indi- 
vidual has  organs.  A  community  grows  or 
decays,  is  healthy  or  diseased,  is  young  or 
aged,  much  as  any  individual  member  of  the 
community  possesses  such  characters.  Each 
of  the  two,  the  community  or  the  individual 
member,  is  as  much  a  live  creature  as  is  the 
other.  Not  only  does  the  community  live, 
it  has  a  mind  of  its  own,  —  a  mind  whose 
psychology  is  not  the  same  as  the  psychology 
of  an  individual  human  being.  The  social 
mind  displays  its  psychological  traits  in  its 
characteristic  products,  —  in  languages,  in 
customs,  in  religions,  —  products  which  an 
individual  human  mind,  or  even  a  collection 
of  such  minds,  when  they  are  not  somehow 
organized  into  a  genuine  community,  cannot 
produce.  Yet  language,  custom,  religion  are 
all  of  them  genuinely  mental  products. 

Communities,   in   their   turn,   tend,   under 
certain  conditions,  to  be  organized  into  com- 

62 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

posite  communities  of  still  higher  and  higher 
grades.  States  are  united  in  empires;  languages 
cooperate  in  the  production  of  universal  litera- 
ture ;  the  corporate  entities  of  many  commu- 
nities tend  to  organize  that  still  very  incom- 
plete community  which,  if  ever  it  comes  into 
existence,  will  be  the  world-state,  the  commu- 
nity possessing  the  whole  world's  civilization. 

So  far,  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  natural 
history  of  the  social  organization,  and  not  of 
its  value.  But  the  history  of  thought  shows 
how  manifold  are  the  ways  in  which,  if  once 
you  grant  that  a  community  is  or  can  be  a 
living  organic  being,  with  a  mind  of  its  own, 
this  doctrine  about  the  natural  facts  can  be 
used  for  ideal,  for  ethical,  purposes.  Few 
ideas  have  been,  in  fact,  more  fruitful  than 
this  one  in  their  indirect  consequences  for 
ethical  doctrines  as  well  as  for  religion. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  many  object 
to  every  such  interpretation  of  the  nature  of 
a  community  by  declaring  that,  whatever  our 
ethical  ideals  may  demand,  a  community 
really  has  no  mind  of  its  own  at  all,  and  is  no 

63 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

living  organism.  All  the  foregoing  statements 
about  the  mind  of  a  community  (as  such 
objectors  insist)  are  metaphorical.  A  com- 
munity is  a  collection  of  individuals.  And 
the  comparison  of  a  community  to  an  animal, 
or  to  a  soul,  is  at  best  a  convenient  fiction. 

Other  critics,  not  so  much  simply  rejecting 
the  foregoing  doctrine  as  hesitating,  remark 
that  to  call  a  community  an  organism,  and  to 
speak  of  its  possession  of  a  mind,  is  to  use 
some  form  of  philosophical  mysticism.  And 
such  mysticism,  they  say,  stands,  in  any  case, 
in  need  of  further  interpretation. 

To  such  objectors  I  shall  here  only  reply 
that  one  can  maintain  all  the  foregoing  views 
regarding  the  real  organic  life  and  regarding 
the  genuine  mind  of  a  community,  without 
committing  one's  self  to  any  form  of  philo- 
sophical mysticism,  and  without  depending 
upon  mere  metaphors.  For  instance,  Wundt, 
in  his  great  book  entitled  "Volkerpsychologie," 
treats  organized  communities  as  psychical  en- 
tities. He  does  so  deliberately,  and  states 
his  reasons.  But  he  does  all  this  purely  as 

64 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

a  psychologist.  Communities,  as  he  insists, 
behave  as  if  they  were  wholes,  and  exhibit 
psychological  laws  of  their  own.  Following 
Wundt,  I  have  already  said  that  it  is  the  com- 
munity which  produces  languages,  customs, 
religions.  These  are,  all  of  them,  intelligent 
mental  products,  which  can  be  psychologically 
analyzed,  which  follow  psychological  laws, 
and  which  exhibit  characteristic  processes  of 
mental  evolution,  —  processes  that  belong 
solely  to  organized  groups  of  men.  So  Wundt 
speaks  unhesitatingly  of  the  Gesammtbewusst- 
sein,  or  Gesammtwille,  of  a  community ; 
and  he  finds  this  mental  life  of  the  community 
to  be  as  much  an  object  for  the  student  of 
the  natural  history  of  mind,  as  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  any  being  whose  life  a  psychologist 
can  examine.  His  grounds  are  not  mystical, 
but  empirical,  —  if  you  will,  pragmatic.  A 
community  behaves  like  an  entity  with  a  mind 
of  its  own.  Therefore  it  is  a  fair  "working 
hypothesis"  for  the  psychologist  to  declare 
that  it  is  such  an  entity,  and  that  a  community 
has,  or  is,  a  mind. 

F  65 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


VI 

So  far,  then,  I  have  merely  sketched  what, 
in  another  context,  will  hereafter  concern  us 
much  more  at  length.  For  in  later  lectures 
we  shall  have  to  study  the  metaphysical  prob- 
lems which  we  here  first  touch.  A  community 
can  be  viewed  as  a  real  unit.  So  we  have 
seen,  and  so  far  only  we  have  yet  gone. 

But  we  have  now  to  indicate  why  this 
conception,  whether  metaphysically  sound  or 
not,  is  a  conception  that  can  be  ethical  in  its 
purposes.  And  here  again  only  the  most 
elementary  and  fundamental  aspects  of  our 
topic  can  be,  in  this  wholly  preparatory  state- 
ment, mentioned.  To  all  these  problems  we 
shall  have  later  to  return. 

We  have  said  that  a  community  can  behave 
like  an  unit ;  we  have  now  to  point  out  that 
an  individual  member  of  a  community  can 
find  numerous  very  human  motives  for  be- 
having towards  his  community  as  if  it  not 
only  were  an  unit,  but  a  very  precious  and 
worthy  being.  In  particular  he  —  the  indi- 

66 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

vidual  member  —  may  love  his  community  as 
if  it  were  a  person,  may  be  devoted  to  it  as  if 
it  were  his  friend  or  father,  may  serve  it,  may 
live  and  die  for  it,  and  may  do  all  this,  not 
because  the  philosophers  tell  him  to  do  so,  but 
because  it  is  his  own  heart's  desire  to  act  thus. 
Of  such  active  attitudes  of  love  and  devo- 
tion towards  a  community,  on  the  part  of  an 
individual  member  of  that  community,  his- 
tory and  daily  life  present  countless  instances. 
One's  family,  one's  circle  of  personal  friends, 
one's  home,  one's  village  community,  one's 
clan,  or  one's  country  may  be  the  object  of 
such  an  active  disposition  to  love  and  to  serve 
the  community  as  an  unit,  to  treat  the  com- 
munity as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  super-personal 
being,  and  as  if  it  could,  in  its  turn,  possess 
the  value  of  a  person  on  some  higher  level. 
One  who  thus  loves  a  community,  regards  its 
type  of  life,  its  form  of  being,  as  essentially 
more  worthy  than  his  own.  He  becomes 
devoted  to  its  interests  as  to  something  that 
by  its  very  nature  is  nobler  than  himself. 
In  such  a  case  he  may  find,  in  his  devotion  to 

67 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

his  community,  his  fulfilment  and  his  moral 
destiny.  In  order  to  view  a  community  in  this 
way  it  is,  I  again  insist,  not  necessary  to  be  a 
mystic.  It  is  only  necessary  to  be  a  hearty 
friend,  or  a  good  citizen,  or  a  home-loving 
being. 

Countless  faithful  and  dutifully  disposed 
souls,  belonging  to  most  various  civilizations, 
—  people  active  rather  than  fanciful,  and  ear- 
nest rather  than  speculative,  —  have  in  fact 
viewed  their  various  communities  in  this  way. 
I  know  of  no  better  name  for  such  a  spirit 
of  active  devotion  to  the  community  to  which 
the  devoted  individual  belongs,  than  the  ex- 
cellent old  word  "  Loyalty,"  —  a  word  to 
whose  deeper  meaning  some  Japanese  thinkers 
have  of  late  years  recalled  our  attention. 

Loyalty,  as  I  have  elsewhere  defined  it,  is 
the  willing  and  thoroughgoing  devotion  of  a 
self  to  a  cause,  when  the  cause  is  something 
which  unites  many  selves  in  one,  and  which 
is  therefore  the  interest  of  a  community.  For 
a  loyal  human  being  the  interest  of  the  com- 
munity to  which  he  belongs  is  superior  to 

68 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

every  merely  individual  interest  of  his  own. 
He  actively  devotes  himself  to  this  cause.1 

Loyalty  exists  in  very  manifold  shapes, 
and  belongs  to  no  one  time,  or  country,  or 
people.  Warlike  tribes  and  nations,  during 
the  stages  of  their  life  which  are  intermediate 
between  savagery  and  civilization,  have  often 
developed  a  high  type  of  the  loyal  conscious- 
ness, and  hence  have  defined  their  virtues  in 
terms  of  loyalty.  Such  loyalty  may  last  over 
into  peaceful  stages  of  social  life;  and  the 
warlike  life  is  not  the  exclusive  originator  of 
the  loyal  spirit.  Loyalty  often  enters  into  a 
close  alliance  with  religion,  and  from  its  very 
nature  is  disposed  to  religious  interpretations. 
To  the  individual  the  loyal  spirit  appeals  by 
fixing  his  attention  upon  a  life  incomparably 
vaster  than  his  own  individual  life,  —  a  life 
which,  when  his  love  for  his  community  is 
once  aroused,  dominates  and  fascinates  him 
by  the  relative  steadiness,  the  strength  and 
fixity  and  stately  dignity,  of  its  motives  and 
demands. 

1  See  Lecture  I  of  the  "Philosophy  of  Loyalty"  (New  York,  1908). 
69 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  individual  is  naturally  wayward  and 
capricious.  This  waywardness  is  a  constant 
source  of  entanglement  and  failure.  But  the 
community  which  he  loves  is  rendered  rela- 
tively constant  in  its  will  by  its  customs; 
yet  these  customs  no  longer  seem,  to  the  loyal 
individual,  mere  conventions  or  commands. 
For  his  social  enthusiasm  is  awakened  by  the 
love  of  his  kind ;  and  he  glories  in  his  service, 
as  the  player  in  his  team,  or  the  soldier  in  his 
flag,  or  the  martyr  in  his  church.  If  his  reli- 
gion comes  into  touch  with  his  loyalty,  then 
his  gods  are  the  leaders  of  his  community, 
and  both  the  majesty  and  the  harmony  of 
the  loyal  life  are  thus  increased.  The  loyal 
motives  are  thus  not  only  moral,  but  also 
aesthetic.  The  community  may  be  to  the 
individual  both  beautiful  and  sublime. 

Deep-seated,  then,  in  human  nature  are  the 
reasons  that  make  loyalty  appear  to  the  in- 
dividual as  a  solution  for  the  problem  of  his 
personal  life.  Yet  these  motives  tend  to  still 
higher  and  vaster  conquests  than  we  have  here 
yet  mentioned.  Warlike  tribes  and  nations 

70 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

fight  together ;  and  in  so  far  loyalty  contends 
with  loyalty.  But  on  a  more  highly  self- 
conscious  level  the  loyal  spirit  tends  to  assume 
the  form  of  chivalry.  The  really  devoted 
and  considerate  warrior  learns  to  admire  the 
loyalty  of  his  foe ;  yes,  even  to  depend  upon  it 
for  some  of  his  own  best  inspiration.  Knight- 
hood prizes  the  knightly  spirit.  The  loyalty 
of  the  clansmen  breeds  by  contagion  a  more 
intense  loyalty  in  other  clans ;  but  at  the  same 
time  it  breeds  a  love  for  just  such  loyalty. 
Kindred  clans  learn  to  respect  and,  ere  long, 
to  share  one  another's  loyalty.  The  result  is 
an  ethical  motive  that  renders  the  alliance 
and,  on  occasion,  the  union  of  various  clans 
and  nationalities  not  only  a  possibility,  but 
a  conscious  ideal. 

The  loyal  are,  in  ideal,  essentially  kin.  If 
they  grow  really  wise,  they  observe  this  fact. 
The  spirit  that  loves  the  community  learns  to 
prize  itself  as  a  spirit  that,  in  all  who  are 
dominated  by  it,  is  essentially  one,  despite 
the  variety  of  special  causes,  of  nationalities, 
or  of  customs.  The  logical  development  of  the 

71 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

loyal  spirit  is  therefore  the  rise  of  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  ideal  of  an  universal  community 
of  the  loyal,  —  a  community  which,  despite 
all  warfare  and  jealousy,  and  despite  all 
varieties  of  gods  and  of  laws,  is  supreme  in  its 
value,  however  remote  from  the  present  life  of 
civilization. 

The  tendency  towards  the  formation  of 
such  an  ideal  of  an  universal  community  can 
be  traced  both  in  the  purely  secular  forms  of 
loyalty,  and  in  the  history  of  the  relations 
between  loyalty  and  religion  in  the  most 
varied  civilizations.  In  brief,  loyalty  is,  from 
the  first,  a  practical  faith  that  communities, 
viewed  as  units,  have  a  value  which  is  superior 
to  all  the  values  and  interests  of  detached 
individuals.  And  the  sort  of  loyalty  which 
reaches  the  level  of  true  chivalry  and  which 
loves  the  honor  and  the  loyalty  of  the  stranger 
or  even  of  the  foe,  tends,  either  in  company 
with  or  apart  from  any  further  religious  mo- 
tive, to  lead  men  towards  a  conception  of  the 
brotherhood  of  all  the  loyal,  and  towards  an 
estimation  of  all  the  values  of  life  in  terms  of 

72 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

their  relation  to  the  service  of  one  ideally 
universal  community.  To  this  community 
in  ideal  all  men  belong ;  and  to  act  as  if  one 
were  a  member  of  such  a  community  is  to  win 
in  the  highest  measure  the  goal  of  individual 
life.  It  is  to  win  what  religion  calls  salva- 
tion. 

When  thus  abstractly  stated,  the  ideal  of  an 
universal  community  may  appear  far  away 
from  the  ordinary  practical  interests  of  the 
plain  man.  But  the  history  of  the  spirit  of 
loyalty  shows  that  there  is  a  strong  tendency 
of  loyalty  towards  such  universal  ideals. 
Some  such  conception  of  the  ideal  community 
of  all  mankind,  actually  resulting  from  re- 
flection upon  the  spirit  of  loyalty,  received  an 
occasional  and  imperfect  formulation  in  Ro- 
man Stoicism.  In  this  more  speculative  shape 
the  Stoic  conception  of  the  universal  com- 
munity was  indeed  not  fitted  to  win  over  the 
Roman  world  as  a  whole  to  an  active  loyalty 
to  the  cause  of  mankind. 

Yet  the  conception  of  universal  loyalty,  as 
devotion  to  the  unity  of  an  ideal  community, 

73 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

a  community  whereof  all  loyal  men  should  be 
members,  has  not  been  left  merely  to  the 
Stoics,  nor  yet  to  any  other  philosophers  to 
formulate.  The  conception  of  loyalty  both 
springs  from  practical  interests  and  tends  of 
itself,  apart  from  speculation,  towards  the 
enlargement  of  the  ideal  community  of  the 
loyal  in  the  direction  of  identifying  that 
community  with  all  mankind.  The  history 
of  the  ideals  and  of  the  religion  of  Israel,  from 
the  Song  of  Deborah  to  the  prophets,  is  a 
classic  instance  of  the  process  here  in  ques- 
tion. 

vn 

We  have  thus  indicated  some  of  the  funda- 
mentally human  motives  which  the  ideal  of 
the  universal  community  expresses.  We  have 
next  to  turn  in  a  wholly  different  direction  and 
to  remind  ourselves  of  the  way  in  which  this 
ideal  found  its  place  in  the  early  history  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

I  cannot  better  introduce  this  part  of  my  dis- 
cussion than  by  calling  attention  to  a  certain 

74 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

contrast  between  the  reported  teaching  of  the 
Master  regarding  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
and  some  of  the  best-known  doctrines  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.  This  contrast  is  as  obvious  and 
as  familiar  as  it  has  been  neglected  by  students 
of  the  philosophy  of  Christianity.  Every 
word  that  I  can  say  about  it  is  old.  Yet  a 
survey  of  the  whole  matter  is  not  common, 
and  I  believe  that  this  contrast  has  never  more 
demanded  a  clear  restatement  .than  it  does 
to-day. 

The  particular  contrast  which  I  here  have 
in  mind  is  not  the  one  which  both  the  apolo- 
gists and  the  critics  of  Pauline  Christianity 
usually  emphasize.  It  is  a  contrast  which 
does  not  directly  relate  to  Paul's  doctrine  of 
the  person  and  mission  of  Christ ;  and  never-, 
theless  it  is  ?,  contrast  that  bears  upon  the  very 
core  of  the  Gospel.  For  it  is  a  contrast  that 
has  to  do  with  the  doctrine  about  the  nature, 
the  office,  the  saving  power  of  Christian  love 
itself.  I  say  that  just  this  contrast  between 
Paul's  doctrine  and  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
although  perfectly  familiar,  has  been  neg- 

75 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

lected  by  students  of  our  problem.  Let  me 
briefly  show  what  I  have  in  mind. 

The  best-known  and,  for  multitudes,  the 
most  directly  moving  of  the  words  which  tradi- 
tion attributes  to  Jesus,  describe  the  duty  of 
man,  the  essence  of  religion,  and  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  itself,  in  terms  of  the  conception  of 
Christian  love.  I  have  not  here  either  the 
time  or  the  power  adequately  to  expound  this 
the  chief  amongst  the  doctrines  which  tradi- 
tion ascribes  directly  to  Jesus.  I  must  pass 
over  what  countless  loving  and  fit  teachers 
have  made  so  familiar.  Yet  I  must  remind 
you  of  two  features  of  Christ's  doctrine  of 
love  which  at  this  point  especially  concern 
our  own  enterprise. 

.  First,  it  is  needful  for  me  to  point  out  that, 
despite  certain  stubborn  and  widespread  mis- 
understandings, the  Christian  doctrine  of 
love,  as  that  doctrine  appears  in  the  parables 
and  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  involves 
and  emphasizes  a  very  positive  and  active 
and  heroic  attitude  towards  life,  and  is  not, 
as  some  have  supposed,  a  negative  doctrine  of 

76 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

passive  self-surrender.  And  secondly,  I  must 
also  bring  to  your  attention  the  fact  that  the 
Master's  teaching  about  love  leaves  unsolved 
certain  practical  problems,  problems  which 
this  very  heroism  and  this  positive  tendency 
of  the  doctrine  make  by  contrast  all  the  more 
striking. 

These  unsolved  problems  of  the  reported 
teaching  of  Jesus  about  love  seem  to  have 
been  deliberately  brought  before  us  by  the 
Master,  and  as  deliberately  left  unsolved. 
The  way  was  thus  opened  for  a  further  de- 
velopment of  what  the  Master  chose  to  teach. 
And  such  further  development  was  presum- 
ably a  part  of  what  the  founder  more  or  less 
consciously  foresaw  and  intended. 

The  grain  of  mustard  seed  —  so  his  faith 
assured  him  —  must  grow.  To  that  end  it  was 
planted.  Now  a  part  of  the  new  growth,  a 
contribution  to  the  treatment  of  the  problems 
which  the  original  teaching  about  love  left 
unsolved,  was,  in  the  sequel,  due  to  Paul. 
This  sequel,  whether  the  Master  foresaw  it  or 
not,  is  as  important  for  the  further  office  of 

77 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Christianity  as  the  original  teaching  was  an 
indispensable  beginning  of  the  process.  Jesus 
awaited  in  trust  a  further  revelation  of  the 
Father's  mind.  Such  a  new  light  came  in  due 
season. 

Two  features,  then,  of  the  doctrine  of  love 
as  taught  by  Jesus,  —  its  impressively  positive 
and  active  character,  and  the  mystery  of  its 
unsolved  problems,  —  these  two  we  must 
next  emphasize.  Then  we  shall  be  ready  to 
take  note  of  a  further  matter  which  also  con- 
cerns us,  —  namely,  Paul's  new  contribution 
to  the  solution  of  the  very  problems  concern- 
ing love  which  the  parables  and  the  sayings  of 
Jesus  had  left  unsolved.  This  new  contribu- 
tion, —  Paul  himself  conceived  not  as  his 
own  personal  invention.  For  he  held  that  the 
new  teaching  was  due  to  the  spirit  of  his  risen 
and  ascended  Lord.  What  concerns  us  is  that 
Paul's  additional  thought  was  a  critical  in- 
fluence in  determining  both  the  evolution  and 
the  permanent  meaning  of  Christianity. 


78 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

VIII 

The  love  which  Jesus  preached  has  often 
been  misunderstood.  Critics,  as  well  as  mis- 
taken friends  of  the  Master's  teachings,  have 
supposed  Christian  love  to  be  more  or  less 
completely  identical  with  self-abnegation,  — 
with  the  amiably  negative  virtue  of  one  who, 
as  the  misleading  modern  phrase  expresses  the 
matter,  "has  no  thought  of  self."  Another 
modern  expression,  also  misleading,  is  used  by 
some  who  identify  Christian  love  with  so- 
called  "pure  altruism."  The  ideal  Christian, 
as  such  people  interpret  his  virtue,  "lives 
wholly  for  others."  That  is  what  is  meant  by 
the  spirit  which  resists  not  evil,  which  turns 
the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter,  which  forgives, 
and  pities,  and  which  abandons  all  worldly 
goods. 

Now,  against  such  misunderstandings, 
many  of  the  wiser  expounders  of  Christian 
doctrine,  both  in  former  times  and  in  our 
own,  have  taken  pains  to  show  that  love,  as 
the  Jesus  of  the  sayings  and  of  the  parables 

79 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

conceived  it,  does  not  consist  in  mere  self- 
abnegation,  and  is  not  identical  with  pure 
altruism,  and  is  both  heroic  and  positive. 
The  feature  of  the  Master's  doctrine  of  love 
which  renders  this  more  positive  and  heroic 
interpretation  of  the  sayings  inevitable,  is 
the  familiar  reason  which  is  laid  at  the  basis 
of  his  whole  teaching.  One  is  to  love  one's 
neighbor  because  God  himself,  as  Father, 
divinely  loves  and  prizes  each  individual  man. 
Hence  the  individual  man  has  an  essentially 
infinite  value,  although  he  has  this  value  only 
in  and  through  his  relation  to  God,  and  be- 
cause of  God's  love  for  him.  Therefore  mere 
self-abnegation  cannot  be  the  central  virtue. 
For  the  Jesus  of  the  sayings  not  only  rejoices 
in  the  divine  love  whereof  every  man  is  the 
object,  but  also  invites  every  man  to  rejoice 
in  the  consciousness  of  this  very  love,  and  to 
delight  also  in  all  men,  since  they  are  God's 
beloved.  The  man  whom  this  love  of  God 
is  to  transform  into  a  perfect  lover  cannot 
henceforth  merely  forget  or  abandon  the  self. 
The  parable  of  the  servant  who,  although  him- 

80 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

self  forgiven  by  his  Lord,  will  not  forgive  his 
fellow-servant,  shows  indeed  how  worthless 
self-assertion  is  when  separated  from  a  sense 
that  all  are  equally  dependent  upon  God's 
love.  But  the  parable  of  the  talents  shows 
with  equal  clearness  how  stern  the  demands  of 
the  divine  love  are  in  requiring  the  individual 
to  find  a  perfectly  positive  expression  of  the 
unique  value  which  it  is  his  office,  and  his 
alone,  to  return  to  his  Lord  with  usury. 
Every  man,  this  self  included,  has  just  such 
an  unique  value,  and  must  be  so  viewed. 
Hence  the  sayings  are  full  of  calls  to  self-ex- 
pression, and  so  to  heroism.  Love  is  divine; 
and  therefore  it  includes  an  assertion  of  its 
own  divinity;  and  therefore  it  can  never 
be  mere  self-abnegation.  Christian  altruism 
never  takes  the  form  of  saying,  "I  myself 
ought  to  be  or  become  nothing;  while  only 
the  others  are  to  be  served  and  saved."  For 
the  God  who  loves  me  demands  not  that  I 
should  be  nothing,  but  that  I  should  be  his 
own.  Love  is  never  merely  an  amiable  toler- 
ance of  whatever  form  human  frailty  and  folly 

G  81 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

may  take.  To  be  sure,  the  lover,  as  Jesus 
depicts  him,  resists  not  evil,  and  turns  his 
cheek  to  the  smiter.  Yes,  but  he  does  this 
with  full  confidence  that  God  sees  all  and  will 
vindicate  his  servant.  The  lover  vividly  an- 
ticipates the  positive  triumph  of  all  the  right- 
eous ;  and  so  his  love  for  even  the  least  of  the 
little  ones  is,  in  anticipation,  an  active  and 
strenuous  sharing  in  the  final  victory  of  God's 
will.  His  very  non-resistance  is  therefore 
inspired  by  a  divine  contempt  for  the  powers 
of  evil.  Why  should  one  resist  who  always 
has  on  his  side  and  in  his  favor  the  power  that 
is  irresistible,  that  loves  him,  and  that  will 
triumph  even  through  his  weakness  ? 

Such  a  spirit  renders  pity  much  more  than 
a  mere  absorption  in  attempting  to  relieve 
the  misery  of  others.  Sympathy  for  the 
sufferer,  as  the  sayings  of  Jesus  depict  it,  is 
but  an  especially  pathetic  illustration  of  one's 
serene  confidence  that  the  Father  who  cares 
for  all  triumphs  over  all  evil,  so  that  when  we 
feel  pity  and  act  pitifully,  we  take  part  in  this 
divine  triumph.  Hence  pity  is  no  mere  ten- 

82 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

derness.     It  is  a  sharing  in  the  victory  that 
overcomes  the  world. 

Such,  then,  in  brief,  is  the  doctrine  of  Chris- 
tian love  as  the  sayings  and  the  parables  con- 
tain it,  —  a  doctrine  as  positive  and  strenuous 
as  it  is  humane,  and  as  it  is  sure  of  the  Father's 
good  will  and  overruling  power.  So  far  I 
indeed  merely  remind  you  of  what  all  the 
wiser  expounders  of  Christian  doctrine,  what- 
ever their  theology  or  their  disagreements, 
have,  on  the  whole,  and  despite  popular  mis- 
understandings, agreed  in  recognizing.  And 
hereupon  you  might  well  be  disposed  to  ask : 
Is  not  this,  in  spirit  and  in  essence,  the  deepest 
meaning,  —  yes,  is  it  not  really  the  whole  of 
Christianity  ?  What  did  Paul  do,  what  could 
he  do,  when  he  spoke  of  love,  but  repeat  this, 
the  Master's  doctrine  ? 

IX 

In  answer  to  this  question,  we  must  next 
note  that,  over  against  this  clear  and  posi- 
tive definition  of  the  spiritual  attitude  that 
Jesus  attributes  to  the  Christian  lover,  there 

83 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

stand  certain  problems  which  come  to  mind 
when  we  ask  for  more  precise  directions  re- 
garding what  the  lover  is  to  do  for  the  object 
of  his  love.  Love  is  concerned  not  only  with 
the  lover's  inner  inspiration,  but  with  the 
services  that  he  is  to  perform  for  the  beloved. 
Now,  in  the  world  in  which  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  places  the  Christian  lover,  love  has 
two  objects,  —  God  and  one's  neighbor. 
What  is  one  to  do  in  order  to  express  one's 
love  for  each  of  these  objects  ? 

So  far  as  concerns  the  lover's  relation  to 
God,  the  answer  is  clear,  and  is  stated  wholly 
in  religious  terms.  Purity  of  heart  in  loving, 
perfect  sincerity  and  complete  devotion,  the 
heroism  of  spirit  just  described,  —  these, 
with  complete  trust  in  God,  with  utter  sub- 
mission to  the  Father's  will,  —  these  are  the 
services  that  the  lover  can  render  to  God. 
In  these  there  is  no  merit;  for  they  are  as 
nothing  in  comparison  with  one's  debt  to  the 
Father.  But  they  are  required.  And  in  so 
far  the  doctrine  of  love  is  made  explicit  and 
the  rule  of  righteousness  is  definite. 

84 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

But  now  let  us  return  to  the  relation  of  love 
to  the  services  that  one  is  to  offer  to  one's 
neighbor.  What  can  the  lover,  —  in  so  far  as 
Jesus  describes  his  task,  —  what  can  he  do  for 
his  fellow-man  ? 

To  this  question  it  is,  indeed,  possible  to  give 
one  answer  which  clearly  defines  a  duty  to 
the  neighbor;  and  this  duty  is  emphasized 
throughout  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  This  duty 
is  the  requirement  to  use  all  fitting  means,  — 
example,  precept,  kindliness,  non-resistance, 
heroism,  patience,  courage,  strenuousness,  — 
all  means  that  tend  to  make  the  neighbor 
himself  one  of  the  lovers.  The  first  duty  of 
love  is  to  produce  love,  to  nourish  it,  to  extend 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  by  teaching  love  to 
all  men.  And  this  service  to  one's  neighbor 
is  a  clearly  definable  service.  And  so  far  the 
love  of  the  neighbor  involves  no  unsolved 
problems. 

But  in  sharp  contrast  with  this  aspect  of 
the  doctrine  of  love  stands  another  aspect, 
which  is  indeed  problematic.  In  addition  to 
the  extension  of  the  loving  spirit  through 

85 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

example  and  precept,  the  lover  of  his  neighbor 
has  on  his  hands  the  whole  problem  of  humane 
and  benevolent  practical  activity,  —  the  prob- 
lem of  the  positively  philanthropic  life. 

The  doctrine  of  love,  —  so  positive,  so 
active,  so  resolute  in  its  inmost  spirit,  —  might 
naturally  be  expected  to  give  in  detail  coun- 
sel regarding  what  to  do  for  the  personal  needs 
of  the  lover's  fellow-man.  But,  at  this  point, 
we  indeed  meet  the  more  baffling  side  of  the 
doctrine  of  love.  Jesus  has  no  system  of 
rules  to  expound  for  guiding  the  single  acts 
of  the  philanthropic  life.  Apart  from  insisting 
upon  the  loving  spirit,  apart  from  the  one 
rule  to  extend  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  and 
to  propagate  this  spirit  of  love  among  men, 
the  Master  leaves  the  practical  decisions  of 
the  lover  to  be  guided  by  loving  instinct 
rather  than  by  a  conscious  doctrine  regarding 
what  sort  of  special  good  one  can  do  to  one's 
neighbor. 

Thus  the  original  doctrine  of  love,  as  taught 
in  the  parables,  involves  no  definite  pro- 
gramme for  social  reform,  and  leaves  us  in  the 

86 


presence  of  countless  unsolved  practical  issues. 
This  is  plainly  a  deliberate  limitation  to  which 
the  Master  chose  to  subject  his  explanations 
about  love. 

Jesus  tells  us  of  many  conditions  that  ap- 
pear necessary  to  the  practical  living  of  the 
life  of  love  for  one's  neighbor.  But  when  we 
ask :  Are  these  conditions  not  only  necessary 
but  sufficient  ?  we  are  often  left  in  doubt. 
Love  relieves  manifest  suffering,  when  it  can ; 
love  feeds  the  hungry,  clothes  the  naked ;  — 
in  brief,  love  seems,  at  first  sight,  simply  to 
offer  to  the  beloved  neighbor  whatever  that 
neighbor  himself  most  desires.  It  is  easy  to 
interpret  the  golden  rule  in  this  simple  way. 
Yet  we  know,  and  the  author  of  the  parables 
well  knows  and  often  tells  us,  that  the  natural 
man  desires  many  things  that  he  ought  not  to 
desire  and  that  love  ought  not  to  give  him. 
Since  the  life  is  more  than  meat,  it  also  follows 
that  feeding  the  hungry  and  clothing  the  naked 
are  not  acts  which  really  supply  what  man 
most  needs.  The  natural  man  does  not  know 
his  own  true  needs.  Hence  the  golden  rule 

87 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

does  not  tell  us  in  detail  what  to  do  for  him, 
but  simply  expresses  the  spirit  of  love.  What 
is  sure  about  love  is  that  it  indeed  unites  the 
lover,  in  spirit,  to  God's  will.  What  consti- 
tutes, in  this  present  world,  the  pathos,  the 
tragedy  of  love,  is  that,  because  our  neighbor 
is  so  mysterious  a  being  to  our  imperfect 
vision,  we  do  not  now  know  how  to  make  him 
happy,  to  relieve  his  deepest  distresses,  to  do 
him  the  highest  good ;  so  that  most  loving  acts, 
such  as  giving  the  cup  of  cold  water,  and 
helping  the  sufferer  who  has  fallen  by  the  way- 
side, seem,  to  our  more  thoughtful  moods,  to 
be  mere  symbols  of  what  love  would  do  if  it 
could,  —  mere  hints  of  the  active  life  that  love 
would  lead  if  it  were  directly  and  fully  guided 
by  the  Father's  wisdom. 

Modern  philanthropy  has  learned  to  de- 
velop a  technically  clearer  consciousness  about 
this  problem  of  effective  benevolence,  and  has 
made  familiar  the  distinction  between  loving 
one's  neighbor,  and  finding  out  how  to  be 
practically  useful  in  meeting  the  neighbor's 
needs.  Hence,  sometimes,  the  modern  mind 

88 


THE  UNIVERSAL  COMMUNITY 

wonders  how  to  apply  the  spirit  of  the  parables 
to  our  special  problems  of  benevolence,  and 
questions  whether,  and  in  what  sense,  the 
original  Gospel  furnishes  guidance  for  our 
own  modern  social  consciousness. 

The  problems  thus  barely  suggested  are  in- 
deed in  a  sense  answered,  so  far  as  the  origi- 
nally reported  teaching  of  Jesus  is  concerned, 
but  are  answered  by  a  consideration  which 
awakens  a  new  call  for  further  interpretation. 
The  parables  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
emphasize,  in  the  present  connection,  two 
things :  First,  that  it  is  indeed  the  business 
of  every  lover  of  his  neighbor  to  help  other 
men  by  rendering  them  also  lovers ;  and  sec- 
ondly that,  as  to  other  matters,  one  who  tries 
to  help  his  neighbor  must  leave  to  God,  to 
the  all-loving  Father,  the  care  for  the  true 
and  final  good  of  the  neighbor  whom  one 
loves.  Since  the  judgment  day  is  near,  in 
the  belief  of  Jesus  and  of  his  hearers,  since 
the  final  victory  of  the  Kingdom  will  erelong 
be  miraculously  manifested,  the  lover,  so 
Jesus  seems  to  hold,  can  wait.  It  is  his  task 


THE  PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

to  use  his  talent  as  he  can,  to  be  ready  for  his 
Lord's  appearance,  and  to  be  strenuous  in 
the  spirit  of  love.  But  the  God  who  cares  for 
the  sparrows  will  care  for  the  success  of  love. 

It  is  simply  not  the  lover's  task  to  set  this 
present  world  right ;  it  is  his  only  to  act  in  the 
spirit  that  is  the  Father's  spirit,  and  that, 
when  revealed  and  triumphant,  at  the  judg- 
ment day,  will  set  all  things  right.  In  this 
way  the  heroism  of  the  ideal  of  the  Kingdom 
is  perfectly  compatible,  in  the  parables,  with 
an  attitude  of  resignation  with  regard  to  the 
means  whereby  the  ideal  is  to  be  accomplished. 
Serene  faith  as  to  the  result,  strenuousness  as 
to  the  act,  whatever  it  is,  which  the  loving 
spirit  just  now  prompts  :  this  is  the  teaching 
of  the  parables. 

I  have  said  that  the  world  of  the  parables 
contains  two  beings  to  whom  Christian  love 
is  owed :  God  and  the  neighbor.  Both,  as 
you  now  see,  are  mysterious.  The  serene 
faith  of  the  Master  sets  one  mystery  side  by 
side  with  the  other,  bids  the  disciple  lay  aside 
all  curious  peering  into  what  is  not  yet  re- 

90 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

vealed  to  the  loving  soul,  and  leaves  to  the 
near  future,  —  to  the  coming  end  of  the  world, 
—  the  lifting  of  all  veils  and  the  reconciliation 
of  all  conflicts. 

X 

Such,  then,  are  the  problems  of  the  doctrine 
of  love  which  the  Master  brings  [to  light,  but 
does  not  answer.  Our  next  question  is  :  What 
does  Paul  contribute  to  this  doctrine  of  love  ? 

Paul  indeed  repeated  many  of  his  Master's 
words  concerning  love ;  and  he  everywhere  is 
in  full  agreement  with  their  spirit.  And  yet 
this  agreement  is  accompanied  by  a  perfectly 
inevitable  further  development  of  the  doctrine 
of  Christian  love,  —  a  development  which  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  into  the  world  of  Paul's 
religious  life  and  teaching  there  has  entered, 
not  only  a  new  experience,  but  a  new  sort  of 
being,  —  a  real  object  whereof  the  Master 
had  not  made  explicit  mention. 

God  and  the  neighbor  are  beings  whose 
general  type  religion  and  common  sense  had 
made  familiar  long  before  Jesus  taught, 

91 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

mysterious  though  God  and  one's  neighbor 
were  to  the  founder's  hearers,  and  still  re- 
main to  ourselves.  Both  of  them  are  con- 
ceived by  the  religious  consciousness  of  the 
parables  as  personal  beings,  and  as  individuals. 
God  is  the  supreme  ruler  who,  as  Christ 
conceives  him,  is  also  an  individual  person, 
and  who  loves  and  wills.  The  neighbor  is  the 
concrete  human  being  of  daily  life. 

But  the  new,  the  third  being,  in  Paul's 
religious  world,  seems  to  the  Apostle  himself 
novel  in  its  type,  and  seems  to  him  to  possess 
a  nature  involving  what  he  more  than  once 
calls  a  "mystery."  To  express,  so  far  as  he 
may,  this  "mystery,"  he  uses  characteristic 
metaphors,  which  have  become  classic. 

This  new  being  is  a  corporate  entity,  — 
the  body  of  Christ,  or  the  body  of  which  the 
now  divinely  exalted  Christ  is  the  head.  Of 
this  body  the  exalted  Christ  is  also,  for  Paul, 
the  spirit  and  also,  in  some  new  sense,  the 
lover.  This  corporate  entity  is  the  Christian 
community  itself. 

Perfectly  familiar  is  the  fact  that  the  exist- 

92 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

ence  and  the  idea  of  this  community  constitute 
a  new  beginning  in  the  evolution  of  Christian- 
ity. But  neglected,  as  I  think  and  as  I  have 
just  asserted,  is  the  subtle  and  momentous 
transformation,  the  great  development  which 
this  new  motive  brings  to  pass  in  the  Pauline 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  Christian  love. 

What  most  interests  us  here,  and  what  is 
least  generally  understand,  I  think,  by  stu- 
dents of  the  problem  of  Christianity,  is  the  fact 
that  this  new  entity,  this  corporate  sort  of 
reality  which  Paul  so  emphasizes,  this  being 
which  is  not  an  individual  man  but  a  com- 
munity, does  not,  as  one  might  suppose, 
render  the  Apostle's  doctrine  of  love  more 
abstract,  more  remote  from  human  life, 
less  direct  and  less  moving,  than  was  the  orig- 
inal doctrine  of  love  in  the  parables.  On  the 
contrary,  the  new  element  makes  the  doctrine 
of  love  more  concrete,  and,  as  I  must  insist, 
really  less  mysterious.  In  speaking  of  this 
corporate  entity,  the  Apostle  uses  metaphors, 
and  knows  that  they  are  metaphors ;  but, 
despite  what  the  Apostle  calls  the  new 

93 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   CHRISTIANITY 

"mystery,"  these  metaphors  explain  much 
that  the  parables  left  doubtful.  These  meta- 
phors do  not  hide,  as  the  Master,  in  using  the 
form  of  the  parable,  occasionally  intended 
for  the  time  to  hide  from  those  who  were  not 
yet  ready  for  the  full  revelation,  truths  which 
the  future  was  to  make  clearer  to  the  disciples. 
No,  Paul's  metaphors  regarding  the  com- 
munity of  the  faithful  in  the  Church  bring  the 
first  readers  of  Paul's  epistles  into  direct 
contact  with  the  problems  of  their  own  daily 
religious  life. 

The  corporate  entity  —  the  Christian  com- 
munity—  proves  to  be,  for  Paul's  religious 
consciousness,  something  more  concrete  than 
is  the  individual  fellow-man.  The  question  : 
Who  is  my  neighbor  ?  had  been  answered  by 
the  Master  by  means  of  the  parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan.  But  that  question  itself 
had  not  been  due  merely  to  the  hardness  of 
heart  of  the  lawyer  who  asked  it.  The  prob- 
lem of  the  neighbor  actually  involves  mys- 
teries which,  as  we  have  already  seen  and 
hereafter  shall  still  further  see,  the  parables 

94 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

deliberately  leave,  along  with  the  conception 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  itself,  to  be  made 
clearer  only  when  the  new  revelation,  for  which 
the  parables  are  preparing  the  way,  shall  have 
been  granted.  Now  Paul  feels  himself  to  be 
in  possession  of  a  very  precious  part  of  this 
further  revelation.  He  has  discovered,  in  his 
own  experience  as  Apostle,  a  truth  that  he 
feels  to  be  new.  He  believes  this  truth  to  be 
a  revelation  due  to  the  spirit  of  his  Lord. 

In  fact,  the  Apostle  has  discovered  a  special 
instance  of  one  of  the  most  significant  of  all 
moral  and  religious  truths,  the  truth  that  a 
community,  when  unified  by  an  active  in- 
dwelling purpose,  is  an  entity  more  concrete 
and,  in  fact,  less  mysterious  than  is  any 
individual  man,  and  that  such  a  community 
can  love  and  be  loved  as  a  husband  and  wife 
love ;  or  as  father  or  mother  love. 

Because  the  particular  corporate  entity 
whose  cause  Paul  represents,  namely,  the 
Christian  community,  is  in  his  own  experience 
something  new,  whose  origin  he  views  as 
wholly  miraculous,  whose  beginnings  and 

95 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

whose  daily  life  are  bound  up  with  the  influ- 
ence which  he  believes  to  be  due  to  the  spirit 
of  his  risen  and  ascended  Lord,  Paul  indeed  re- 
gards the  Church  as  a  "mystery."  But,  as  a 
fact,  his  whole  doctrine  regarding  the  com- 
munity has  a  practical  concreteness,  a  clear 
common  sense  about  it,  such  that  he  is  able 
to  restate  the  doctrine  of  Christian  love  so  as 
to  be  fully  just  to  all  its  active  heroism,  while 
interpreting  much  which  the  parables  left 
problematic. 

XI 

What  can  I  do  for  my  neighbor's  good  ? 
The  parables  had  answered:  "Love  him, 
help  him  in  his  obvious  and  bitter  needs, 
teach  him  the  spirit  of  love,  and  leave  the 
rest  to  God."  Does  Paul  make  light  of  this 
teaching  ?  On  the  contrary,  his  hymn  in 
honor  of  love,  in  the  first  epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, is  one  of  Christianity's  principal  treas- 
ures. Nowhere  is  the  real  consequence  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  regarding  love  more 
completely  stated.  But  notice  this  differ- 

96 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

ence :  For  Paul  the  neighbor  has  now  be- 
come a  being  who  is  primarily  the  fellow-mem- 
ber of  the  Christian  community. 

The  Christian  community  is  itself  something 
visible;  miraculously  guided  by  the  Master's 
spirit.  It  is  at  once  for  the  Apostle  a  fact  of 
present  experience  and  a  divine  creation. 
And  therefore  every  word  about  love  for  the 
neighbor  is  in  the  Apostle's  teaching  at  once 
perfectly  direct  and  human  in  its  effectiveness 
and  is  nevertheless  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  a  new  and,  as  Paul  believes,  a  divinely 
inspired  love  for  the  community. 

Both  the  neighbor  and  the  lover  of  the 
neighbor  to  whom  the  Apostle  appeals  are, 
to  his  mind,  members  of  the  body  of  Christ; 
and  all  the  value  of  each  man  as  an  individual 
is  bound  up  with  his  membership  in  this  body, 
and  with  his  love  for  the  community. 

Jesus  had  taught  that  God  loves  the  neigh- 
bor, —  yes,  even  the  least  of  these  little  ones. 
Paul  says  to  the  Ephesians :  "Christ  loved 
the  church,  and  gave  himself  up  for  it,  that  he 
might  sanctify  it ;  .  .  .  that  he  might  present 
H  97 


the  church  to  himself  a  glorious  church,  not 
having  spot :  .  .  .  but  that  it  should  be 
holy  and  without  blemish."  One  sees :  The 
object  of  the  divine  love,  as  Paul  conceives  it, 
has  been  at  once  transformed  and  fulfilled. 

In  God's  love  for  the  neighbor,  the  par- 
ables find  the  proof  of  the  infinite  worth  of 
the  individual.  In  Christ's  love  for  the 
Church  Paul  finds  the  proof  that  both  the 
community,  and  the  individual  member,  are 
the  objects  of  an  infinite  concern,  which 
glorifies  them  both,  and  thereby  unites  them. 
The  member  finds  his  salvation  only  in  union 
with  the  Church.  He,  the  member,  would 
be  dead  without  the  divine  spirit  and  without 
the  community.  But  the  Christ  whose  com- 
munity this  is,  has  given  life  to  the  members, 
-  the  life  of  the  Church,  and  of  Christ  him- 
self. "You  hath  he  quickened,  which  were 
dead  in  trespasses  and  sins." 

In  sum  :  Christian  love,  as  Paul  conceives  it, 
takes  on  the  form  of  Loyalty.  This  is  Paul's 
simple  but  vast  transformation  of  Christian 
love. 

98 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

Loyalty  itself  was,  in  the  history  of  human- 
ity, already,  at  that  time,  ancient.  It  had  ex- 
isted in  all  tribes  and  peoples  that  knew  what 
it  was  for  the  individual  so  to  love  his  com- 
munity as  to  glory  in  living  and  dying  for 
that  community.  To  conceive  virtue  as  faith- 
fulness to  one's  community,  was,  in  so  far, 
no  new  thing.  Loyalty,  moreover,  had  long 
tended  towards  a  disposition  to  enlarge  both 
itself  and  its  community.  As  the  world  had 
come  together,  it  had  gradually  become  pos- 
sible for  philosophers,  such  as  the  later  Stoics, 
to  conceive  of  all  humanity  as  in  ideal  one 
community. 

Although  this  was  so  far  a  too  abstract  con- 
ception to  conquer  the  world  of  contending 
powers,  the  spirit  of  loyalty  was  also  not 
without  its  religious  relationships,  and  tended, 
as  religion  tended,  to  make  the  moral  realm 
appear,  not  only  a  world  of  human  communi- 
ties, but  a  world  of  divinely  ordained  unity. 
Meanwhile,  upon  every  stage,  long  before  the 
Christian  virtues  were  conceived,  loyalty  had 
inspired  nations  of  warriors  with  the  sternest 

99 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  their  ideals  of  heroism,  and  with  their 
noblest  visions  of  the  destiny  of  the  individual. 
And  the  prophets  of  Israel  had  indeed  con- 
ceived the  Israel  of  God's  ultimate  triumph 
as  a  community  in  and  through  which  all 
men  should  know  God  and  be  blessed. 

But  in  Paul's  teaching,  loyalty,  quickened 
to  new  life,  not  merely  by  hope,  but  by  the 
presence  of  a  community  in  whose  meetings 
the  divine  spirit  seemed  to  be  daily  working 
fresh  wonders,  keeps  indeed  its  natural  rela- 
tion to  the  militant  virtues,  is  heroic  and  stren- 
uous, and  delights  to  use  metaphors  derived 
from  the  soldier's  life.  It  appears  also  as  the 
virtue  of  those  who  love  order,  and  who  pre- 
fer law  to  anarchy,  and  who  respect  worldly 
authority.  And  it  derives  its  religious  ideas 
from  the  prophets. 

But  it  also  becomes  the  fulfilment  of  what 
Jesus  had  taught  in  the  parables  concerning 
love.  For  the  Apostle,  this  loyalty  unites  to 
all  these  stern  and  orderly  and  militant  traits, 
and  to  all  that  the  prophets  had  dreamed 
about  Israel's  triumph,  the  tenderness  of  a 

100 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

brother's  love  for  the  individual  brother. 
Consequently,  in  Paul's  mind,  love  for  the 
individual  human  being,  and  loyalty  to  the 
divine  community  of  all  the  faithful ;  gra- 
ciousness  of  sentiment,  and  orderliness  of  dis- 
cipline; are  so  directly  interwoven  that  each 
interprets  and  glorifies  the  other. 

If  the  Corinthians  unlovingly  contend, 
brother  with  brother,  concerning  their  gifts, 
Paul  tells  them  about  the  body  of  Christ, 
and  about  the  divine  unity  of  its  spirit  in  all 
the  diversity  of  its  members  and  of  their 
powers.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  loyalty  to 
the  Church  which  is  to  be  interpreted  and 
revivified,  Paul  pictures  the  dignity  of  the 
spiritual  community  in  terms  of  the  direct 
beauty  and  sweetness  and  tenderness  of  the 
love  of  brother  for  brother,  —  that  love  which 
seeketh  not  her  own. 

The  perfect  union  of  this  inspired  passion 
for  the  community,  with  this  tender  fond- 
ness for  individuals,  is  at  once  the  secret  of 
the  Apostle's  power  as  a  missionary  and  the 
heart  of  his  new  doctrine.  Of  loyalty  to  the 

101 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

spirit  and  to  the  body  of  Christ,  he  discourses 
in  his  most  abstruse  as  well  as  in  his  most 
eloquent  passages.  But  his  letters  close  with 
the  well-known  winning  and  tender  messages 
to  and  about  individual  members  and  about 
their  intimate  personal  concerns. 

As  to  the  question:  "What  shall  I  do  for 
my  brother  ? "  Paul  has  no  occasion  to 
answer  that  question  except  in  terms  of  the 
brother's  relations  to  the  community.  But 
just  for  that  reason  his  counsels  can  be  as 
concrete  and  definite  as  each  individual  case 
requires  them  to  be.  Because  the  community, 
as  Paul  conceives  it,  —  the  small  community 
of  a  Pauline  church,  —  keeps  all  its  members 
in  touch  with  one  another;  because  its 
harmony  is  preserved  through  definite  plans 
for  setting  aside  the  differences  that  arise 
amongst  individuals ;  because,  by  reason  of 
the  social  life  of  the  whole,  the  physical 
needs,  the  perils,  the  work,  the  prosperity  of 
the  individual  are  all  made  obvious  facts  of 
the  common  experience  of  the  church,  and 
are  all  just  as  obviously  and  definitely  related 

102 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

to  the  health  of  the  whole  body, — Paul's  gospel 
of  love  has  constant  and  concrete  practical 
applications  to  the  life  of  those  whom  he  ad- 
dresses. The  ideal  of  the  parables  has  be- 
come a  visible  life  on  earth.  So  live  together 
that  the  Church  may  be  worthy  of  Christ 
who  loves  it,  so  help  the  individual  brother 
that  he  may  be  a  fitting  member  of  the  Church. 
Such  are  now  the  counsels  of  love. 

All  this  teaching  of  Paul  was  accompanied, 
of  course,  in  the  Apostle's  own  mind,  by  the 
unquestioning  assurance  that  this  community 
of  the  Christian  faith,  as  he  knew  it  and  in 
his  letters  addressed  its  various  representa- 
tives, was  indeed  a  genuinely  universal  com- 
munity. It  was  already,  to  his  mind,  what 
the  prophets  had  predicted  when  they  spoke 
of  the  redeemed  Israel.  By  the  grace  of  God, 
all  men  belonged  to  this  community,  or  would 
soon  belong  to  it,  whom  God  was  pleased  to 
save  at  all. 

For  the  end  of  the  world  was  very  soon  to 
come,  and  would  manifest  its  membership, 
its  divine  head,  and  its  completed  mission. 

103 


According  to  Paul's  expectation,  there  was  to 
be  no  long  striving  towards  an  ideal  that  in 
time  was  remote.  He  dealt  with  the  interests 
of  all  mankind.  But  his  faith  brought  him 
into  direct  contact  with  the  institution  that 
represented  this  world-wide  interest.  What 
loyalty  on  its  highest  levels  has  repeatedly 
been  privileged  to  imagine  as  the  ideal  brother- 
hood of  all  who  are  loyal,  Paul  found  directly 
presented,  in  his  religious  experience,  as  his 
own  knowledge  of  his  Master's  purpose,  and 
of  its  imminent  fulfilment. 

This  vision  began  to  come  to  Paul  when  he 
was  called  to  be  an  apostle;  and  later,  when 
he  was  sent  to  the  Gentiles,  the  ideal  grew 
constantly  nearer  and  clearer.  The  Church 
was,  for  Paul,  the  very  presence  of  his  Lord. 

Such,  then,  was  the  first  highly  developed 
Christian  conception  of  the  universal  com- 
munity. That  which  the  deepest  and  highest 
rational  interests  of  humanity  make  most 
desirable  for  all  men,  and  that  which  the 
prophets  of  Israel  had  predicted  afar  off,  the 
religious  experience  of  Paul  brought  before  his 

104 


THE    UNIVERSAL    COMMUNITY 

eyes  as  the  daily  work  of  the  spirit  in  the 
Church.  Was  not  Christ  present  whenever 
the  faithful  were  assembled  ?  Was  not  the 
spirit  living  in  their  midst  ?  Was  not  the  day 
of  the  Lord  at  hand  ?  Would  not  they  all 
soon  be  changed,  when  the  last  trumpet 
should  sound  ? 

Our  sketch,  thus  far,  of  the  spirit  of  the 
ideal  of  the  universal  community,  solves  none 
of  our  problems.  But  it  helps  to  define 
them.  This,  the  first  of  our  three  essential 
ideas  of  Christianity,  is  the  idea  of  a  spiritual 
life  in  which  universal  love  for  all  individuals 
shall  be  completely  blended,  practically  har- 
monized, with  an  absolute  loyalty  for  a  real 
and  universal  community.  God,  the  neighbor, 
and  the  one  church :  These  three  are  for 
Paul  the  objects  of  Christian  love  and  the 
inspiration  of  the  life  of  love. 

Paul's  expectations  of  the  coming  judgment 
were  not  realized.  Those  little  apostolic 
churches,  where  the  spirit  daily  manifested 
itself,  gave  place  to  the  historical  church  of 
the  later  centuries,  whose  possession  of  the 

105 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

spirit  has  often  been  a  matter  of  dogma  rather 
than  of  life,  and  whose  unity  has  been  so  often 
lost  to  human  view.  The  letter  has  hidden 
the  spirit.  The  Lord  has  delayed  his  coming. 
The  New  Jerusalem,  adorned  as  a  bride  for 
her  husband,  remains  hidden  behind  the 
heavens.  The  vision  has  become  the  Problem 
of  Christianity. 

Our  sketch  has  been  meant  merely  to  help 
us  towards  a  further  definition  of  this  prob- 
lem. To  such  a  definition  our  later  lectures 
must  attempt  still  further  to  contribute. 
We  have  a  hint  of  the  sources  of  the  first  of 
our  three  essential  ideas  of  Christianity.  We 
have  still  to  consider  what  is  the  truth  of 
this  idea.  And  in  order  to  move  towards  an 
answer  to  this  question,  we  shall  be  obliged, 
in  our  immediately  subsequent  lectures,  to 
attempt  a  formulation  of  the  two  other 
essential  ideas  of  Christianity  named  in  our 
introductory  statement. 


106 


LECTURE  III 

THE  MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

"  A  LL  things  excellent,"  says  Spinoza,  "are 
-£^-  as  difficult  as  they  are  rare;"  and 
Spinoza's  word  here  repeats  a  lesson  that 
nearly  all  of  the  world's  religious  and  moral 
teachers  agree  in  emphasizing.  Whether  such 
a  guide  speaks  simply  of  "excellence,"  or 
uses  the  distinctively  religious  phraseology 
and  tells  us  about  the  way  to  "salvation,"  he 
is  sure,  if  he  is  wise,  to  recognize,  and  on 
occasion  to  say,  that  whoever  is  to  win  the 
highest  goal  must  first  learn  to  bear  a  heavy 
burden.  It  also  belongs  to  the  common  lore 
of  the  sages  to  teach  that  this  burden  is  much 
more  due  to  the  defects  of  our  human  nature 
than  to  the  hostility  of  fortune.  "We  our- 
selves make  our  time  short  for  our  task": 
such  comments  are  as  trite  as  they  are  well 
founded  in  the  facts  of  life. 


109 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 


But  among  the  essential  ideas  of  Chris- 
tianity, there  is  one  which  goes  beyond  this 
common  doctrine  of  the  serious-minded  guides 
of  humanity.  For  this  idea  defines  the  moral 
burden,  to  which  the  individual  who  seeks 
salvation  is  subject,  in  so  grave  a  fashion  that 
many  lovers  of  mankind,  and,  in  particular, 
many  modern  minds,  have  been  led  to  declare 
that  so  much  of  Christian  doctrine,  at  least 
in  the  forms  in  which  it  is  usually  stated,  is 
an  unreasonable  and  untrue  feature  of  the 
faith.  This  idea  I  stated  at  the  close  of  our 
first  lecture,  side  by  side  with  the  two  other 
ideas  of  Christianity  which  I  propose,  in  these 
lectures,  to  discuss.  The  idea  of  the  Church, 
—  of  the  universal  community,  —  which  was 
our  topic  in  the  second  lecture,  is  expressed 
by  the  assertion  that  there  is  a  real  and  di- 
vinely significant  spiritual  community  to  which 
all  must  belong  who  are  to  win  the  true 
goal  of  life.  The  idea  of  the  moral  burden 

no 


MORAL  BURDENOFTHE  INDIVIDUAL 

of  the  individual  is  expressed  by  maintaining 
that  (as  I  ventured  to  state  this  idea  in  my 
own  words)  :  "The  individual  human  being 
is  by  nature  subject  to  some  overwhelming 
moral  burden  from  which,  if  unaided,  he 
cannot  escape.  Both  because  of  what  has 
technically  been  called  original  sin,  and  be- 
cause of  the  sins  that  he  himself  has  com- 
mitted, the  individual  is  doomed  to  a  spiritual 
ruin  from  which  only  a  divine  intervention 
can  save  him." 

This  doctrine  constitutes  the  second  of  the 
three  Christian  ideas  that  I  propose  to  dis- 
cuss. I  must  take  it  up  in  the  present 
lecture. 

II 

To  this  mode  of  continuing  our  discussion 
you  may  object  that  our  second  lecture 
left  the  idea  of  the  Church  very  incompletely 
stated,  and,  in  many  most  important  respects, 
also  left  that  idea  uninterpreted,  uncriticised, 
and  not  yet  brought  into  any  clear  relation 
with  the  creed  of  the  modern  man,  Is  it 

111 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

well,  you  may  ask,  to  discuss  a  second  one  of 
the  Christian  ideas,  when  the  first  has  not 
yet  been  sufficiently  defined  ? 

I  answer  that  the  three  Christian  ideas 
which  we  have  chosen  for  our  inquiry  are  so 
closely  related  that  each  throws  light  upon 
the  others,  and  in  turn  receives  light  from 
them.  Each  of  these  ideas  needs,  in  some 
convenient  order,  to  be  so  stated  and  so 
illustrated,  and  then  so  made  the  topic  of  a 
thoughtful  reflection,  that  we  shall  hereby 
learn :  First,  about  the  basis  of  this  idea  in 
human  nature;  secondly,  about  its  value, 
—  its  ethical  significance  as  an  interpretation 
of  life;  and  thirdly,  about  its  truth,  and 
about  its  relation  to  the  real  world.  At  the 
close  of  our  survey  of  the  three  ideas,  we  shall 
bring  them  together,  and  thus  form  some 
general  notion  of  what  is  essential  to  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  viewed  as  a  whole. 
We  shall  at  the  same  time  be  able  to  define 
the  way  in  which  this  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  expresses  certain  actual  needs  of  men, 
and  undertakes  to  meet  these  needs.  We 

112 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

shall  then  have  grounds  for  estimating  the 
ethical  and  religious  value  of  the  connected 
whole  of  the  doctrines  in  question. 

There  will  then  remain  the  hardest  part  of 
our  task:  the  study  of  the  relation  of  these 
Christian  ideas  to  the  real  world.  So  far  as 
we  are  concerned,  this  last  part  of  our  inves- 
tigation will  involve,  in  the  main,  meta- 
physical problems  ;  and  the  closing  lectures  of 
our  course  will  therefore  contain  an  outline 
of  the  metaphysics  of  Christianity,  culminat- 
ing in  a  return  to  the  problems  of  the  modern 
man. 

Such  is  our  task.  On  the  way  toward  our 
goal  we  must  be  content,  for  a  time,  with 
fragmentary  views.  They  will,  ere  long,  come 
into  a  certain  unity  with  one  another;  but 
for  that  unity  we  must  wait,  until  each  idea 
has  had  its  own  partial  and  preliminary 
presentation. 

Of  the  idea  of  the  universal  community 

we  have  learned,  thus  far,  two  things,  and 

no    more.     First,    we    have    seen    that    this 

idea  has  a  broad  psychological  basis  in  the 

I  113 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

social  nature  of  mankind,  while  it  gets  its 
ethical  value  from  its  relations  to  the  interests 
and  needs  of  all  those  of  any  time  or  nation 
who  have  learned  what  is  the  deeper  meaning 
of  loyalty.  By  loyalty,  as  you  remember,  I 
mean  the  thoroughgoing,  practical,  and  loving 
devotion  of  a  self  to  an  united  community. 

Secondly,  we  have  seen  that,  in  addition 
to  its  general  basis  in  human  nature,  this 
idea  has  its  specifically  Christian  form.  The 
significance  of  this  form  we  have  illustrated 
by  the  way  in  which  the  original  doctrine  of 
Christian  love,  as  Jesus  taught  it  in  his  sayings 
and  parables,  received  not  only  an  applica- 
tion, but  also  a  new  development  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  apostolic  churches,  when 
the  Apostle  Paul  experienced  and  moulded 
their  life. 

The  synthesis  of  the  Master's  doctrine  of 
love  with  the  type  of  loyalty  which  the  life 
of  the  spirit  in  the  Church  taught  Paul  to 
express,  makes  concrete  and  practical  certain 
more  mysterious  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of 
love  which  the  Master  had  taught  in  parables, 

114 


MORAL  BURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

but  had  left  for  a  further  revelation  to  define. 
And  herewith  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  idea 
of  the  universal  community  entered,  as  a 
permanent  possession,  into  the  history  of 
Christianity. 

This  preliminary  study  of  the  idea  of  the 
universal  community  leaves  us  with  countless 
unsolved  problems.  But  it  at  least  shows  us 
where  some  portion  of  our  main  problem  lies. 
The  dogmas  of  the  historical  Church  concern- 
ing its  own  authority  we  have  so  far  left,  in 
our  discussion,  almost  untouched.  That  the 
spirit  and  the  letter  of  this  first  of  our  Chris- 
tian ideas  are  still  very  far  apart,  all  who  love 
mankind,  and  who  regard  Christianity  wisely, 
well  know.  We  have  not  yet  tried  to  show 
how  spirit  and  letter  are  to  be  brought  nearer 
together.  It  has  not  been  my  privilege  to 
tell  you  where  the  true  Church  is  to-day  to  be 
found.  As  a  fact,  I  believe  it  still  to  be  an 
invisible  Church.  And  I  readily  admit  that 
a  disembodied  idea  does  not  meet  all  the 
interests  of  Christianity,  and  does  not  answer 
all  the  questions  of  the  modern  man. 

115 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

But  we  have  yet,  in  due  time,  to  consider 
whether,  and  to  what  extent,  the  universal 
community  is  a  reality.  That  is  a  problem, 
partly  of  dogma,  partly  of  metaphysics.  It 
is  not  my  office  to  supply  the  modern  man, 
or  any  one  else,  with  a  satisfactory  system  of 
dogmas.  But  I  believe  that  philosophy  has 
still  something  to  say  which  is  worth  saying 
regarding  the  sense  in  which  there  really  is 
an  universal  community  such  as  expresses 
what  the  Christian  idea  means.  I  shall 
hereafter  offer  my  little  contribution  to  this 
problem. 

Ill 

Let  us  turn,  then,  to  our  new  topic.  The 
moralists,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out, 
are  generally  agreed  that  whoever  is  to  win 
the  highest  things  must  indeed  learn  to  bear 
a  heavy  moral  burden.  But  the  Christian 
idea  now  in  question  adds  to  the  common 
lore  of  the  moralists  the  sad  word :  "  The 
individual  cannot  bear  this  burden.  His  tainted 
nature  forbids;  his  guilt  weighs  him  down. 

116 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

If  by  salvation  one  means  a  winning  of  the 
true  goal  of  life,  the  individual,  unaided,  can- 
not be  saved.  And  the  help  that  he  needs  for 
bearing  his  burden  must  come  from  some 
source  entirely  above  his  own  level,  —  from 
a  source  which  is,  in  some  genuine  sense, 
divine." 

The  most  familiar  brief  statement  of  the 
present  idea  is  that  of  Paul  in  the  passage  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  the  epistle  to  the 
Romans,  which  culminates  in  this  cry : 
"O  wretched  man  that  I  am  !"  What  the 
Apostle,  in  the  context  of  this  passage,  ex- 
pounds as  his  interpretation  both  of  his  own 
religious  experience  and  of  human  nature 
in  general,  has  been  much  more  fully  stated 
in  the  form  of  well-known  doctrines,  and  has 
formed  the  subject-matter  for  ages  of  Chris- 
tian controversy. 

In  working  out  his  own  theory  of  the  facts 
which  he  reports,  Paul  was  led  to  certain  often 
cited  statements  about  the  significance  and 
the  effect  of  Adam's  legendary  transgression. 
And,  as  a  consequence  of  these  words  and  of 

117 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

a  few  other  Pauline  passages,  technical  prob- 
lems regarding  original  sin,  predestination, 
and  related  topics  have  come  to  occupy  so 
large  a  place  in  the  history  of  theology,  that, 
to  many  minds,  Paul's  own  report  of  personal 
experience,  and  his  statements  about  plain 
facts  of  human  nature,  have  been  lost  to 
sight  (so  far  as  concerns  the  idea  of  the 
moral  burden  of  the  individual)  in  a  maze  of 
controversial  complications.  To  numerous 
modern  minds  the  whole  idea  of  the  moral 
burden  of  the  individual  seems,  therefore, 
to  be  an  invention  of  theologians,  and  to 
possess  little  or  no  religious  importance. 

Yet  I  believe  that  such  a  view  is  profoundly 
mistaken.  The  idea  of  the  moral  burden  of 
the  individual  is,  as  we  shall  see,  not  without 
its  inherent  complications,  and  not  without 
its  relation  to  very  difficult  problems,  both 
ethical  and  metaphysical.  Yet,  of  the  three 
essential  ideas  of  Christianity  which  consti- 
tute our  list,  it  is,  relatively  speaking,  the 
simplest,  and  the  one  which  can  be  most 
easily  interpreted  to  the  enlightened  common 

118 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

sense  of  the  modern  man.  Its  most  familiar 
difficulties  are  due  rather  to  the  accidents  of 
controversy  than  to  the  nature  of  the  subject. 

The  fate  which  has  beset  those  who  have 
dealt  with  the  technical  efforts  to  express 
this  idea  is  partly  explicable  by  the  general 
history  of  religion ;  but  is  also  partly  due  to 
varying  personal  factors,  such  as  those  which 
determined  Paul's  own  training.  This  fate 
may  be  summed  up  by  saying  that,  regarding 
just  this  matter  of  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual,  those  who,  by  virtue  of  their  gen- 
ius or  of  their  experience,  have  most  known 
what  they  meant,  have  least  succeeded  in 
making  clear  to  others  what  they  know. 

Paul,  for  instance,  grasped  the  essential 
meaning  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual 
with  a  perfectly  straightforward  veracity  of 
understanding.  What  he  saw,  as  to  this 
matter,  he  saw  with  tragic  clearness,  and 
upon  the  basis  of  a  type  of  experience  that,  in 
our  own  day,  we  can  verify,  as  we  shall  soon 
see,  much  more  widely  than  was  possible  for 
him.  But  when  he  put  his  doctrine  into 

119 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

words,  both  his  Rabbinical  lore,  and  his 
habits  of  interpreting  tradition,  troubled  his 
speech ;  and  the  passages  which  embody  his 
theory  of  the  sinfulness  of  man  remain  as 
difficult  and  as  remote  from  his  facts,  as  his 
report  of  these  facts  of  life  themselves  is  elo- 
quent and  true. 

Similar  has  been  the  fortune  of  nearly  all 
subsequent  theology  regarding  the  technical 
treatment  of  this  topic.  Yet  growing  human 
experience,  through  all  the  Christian  ages, 
has  kept  the  topic  near  to  life ;  and  to-day  it 
is  in  closer  touch  with  life  than  ever.  The 
idea  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual 
seems,  to  many  cheerful  minds,  austere; 
but,  if  it  is  grave  and  stern,  it  is  grave  with 
the  gravity  of  life,  and  stern  only  as  the  call 
of  life,  to  any  awakened  mind,  ought  to  be 
stern.  If  the  traditional  technicalities  have 
obscured  it,  they  have  not  been  able  to 
affect  its  deeper  meaning  or  its  practical  sig- 
nificance. Rightly  interpreted,  it  forms,  I 
think,  not  only  an  essential  feature  of  Chris- 
tianity, but  an  indispensable  part  of  every 

120 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

religious  and  moral  view  of  life  which  con- 
siders man's  business  justly,  and  does  so  with 
a  reasonable  regard  for  the  larger  connections 
of  our  obligations  and  of  our  powers. 

IV 

If  we  ourselves  are  to  see  these  larger  con- 
nections, we  must,  for  the  time,  disregard  the 
theological  complications  of  the  history  of 
doctrine  concerning  original  sin,  and  must  also 
disregard  the  metaphysical  problems  that 
lie  behind  these  complications.  We  must  do 
this ;  but  not  as  if  these  theological  theories 
were  wholly  arbitrary,  or  wholly  insignificant. 
We  must  simply  begin  with  those  facts  of  hu- 
man nature  which  here  most  deeply  concern 
us. 

These  facts  have  a  metaphysical  basis. 
In  the  end,  we  ourselves  shall  seek  to  come 
into  touch  with  so  much  of  theology  as  most 
has  to  do  with  our  problem  of  Christianity. 
We  cannot  tell,  until  our  preliminary  survey 
is  completed,  and  our  metaphyscial  treatment 
of  our  problem  is  reached,  what  form  our 

121 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

sketch  of  a  theology  will  assume.  We  must 
be  patient  with  our  fragmentary  views  until 
we  see  how  to  bring  them  together. 

But,  for  the  time  being,  our  question  re- 
lates not  to  the  legend  of  Adam's  fall,  nor  to 
something  technically  called  original  sin,  but 
to  man  as  we  empirically  know  him.  We 
ask :  How  far  is  the  typical  individual  man 
weighed  down,  in  his  efforts  to  win  the  goal 
of  life,  by  a  burden  such  as  Paul  describes  in 
his  epistle  to  the  Romans  ?  And  what  is 
the  significance  of  this  burden  ? 

Here,  at  once,  we  meet  with  the  obvious 
fact,  often  mentioned,  not  only  in  ancient, 
but  also  in  many  modern,  discussions  of  our 
topic,  —  with  the  fact  that  there  are,  deep- 
seated  in  human  nature,  many  tendencies 
that  our  mature  moral  consciousness  views 
as  evil.  These  tendencies  have  a  basis  in 
qualities  that  are  transmitted  by  heredity. 

Viewed  as  an  observant  naturalist,  —  as 
a  disinterested  student  of  the  life-process 
views  them,  all  our  inherited  instincts  are, 
in  one  sense,  upon  a  level.  For  no  instincts 

122 


MORALBURDENOFT HE  INDIVIDUAL 

are,  at  the  outset  of  life,  determined  by  any 
purpose,  —  either  good  or  evil,  —  of  which 
we  are  then  conscious.  But,  when  trained, 
through  experience  and  action,  our  instincts 
become  interwoven  into  complex  habits,  and 
thus  are  transformed  into  our  voluntary 
activities.  What  at  the  beginning  is  an 
elemental  predisposition  to  respond  to  a 
specific  sensory  stimulus  in  a  more  or  less 
vigorous  but  incoherent  and  generalized  way, 
becomes,  in  the  context  of  the  countless 
other  predispositions  upon  which  is  based  our 
later  training,  the  source  of  a  mode  of  conduct, 
—  of  conduct  that,  as  we  grow,  tends  to  be- 
come more  and  more  definite,  and  that  may 
be  valuable  for  good  or  for  ill.  And,  as  a 
fact,  many  of  our  instinctive  predispositions 
actually  appear,  in  the  sequel,  to  be  like 
noxious  plants  or  animals.  That  is,  to  use 
a  familiar  phrase,  they  "turn  out  ill."  They 
are  expressed  in  our  maturer  life  in  malad- 
justments, in  vices,  or  perhaps  in  crimes. 

Now  Paul,  like  a  good  many  other  moralists, 
was  impressed  by  the  number  and  by  the  vigor 

123 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  those  amongst  our  instinctive  predisposi- 
tions which,  under  the  actual  conditions  of 
human  training,  "turn  out  ill,"  and  are  inter- 
woven into  habits  that  often  lead  the  natural 
man  into  baseness  and  into  a  maze  of  evil 
deeds.  Paul  summarizes  this  aspect  of  the 
facts,  as  he  saw  them,  in  his  familiar  picture, 
first,  of  the  Gentile  world,  and  then  of  the 
moral  state  of  the  unregenerate  who  were 
Jews.  This  picture  we  find  in  the  opening 
chapters  of  his  epistle  to  the  Romans. 

The  majority  of  readers  appear  to  suppose 
that  the  essential  basis  of  Paul's  theory  about 
the  moral  burden  of  the  individual  is  to  be 
found  in  these  opening  chapters,  and  in  the 
assertion  that  the  worst  vices  and  crimes  of 
mankind  are  the  most  accurate  indications  of 
how  bad  human  nature  is.  For  such  readers, 
whether  they  agree  with  Paul  or  not,  the 
whole  problem  reduces  to  the  question:  "Are 
men,  and  are  human  traits  and  tendencies, 
naturally  as  mischievous ;  are  we  all  as  much 
predisposed  to  vices  and  to  crimes  as  Paul's 
dark  picture  of  the  world  in  which  he  lived  bids 

124 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

us  believe  that  all  human  characters  are  ?  Is 
man,  —  viewed  as  a  fair  observer  from  another 
planet  might  view  him,  —  is  man  by  nature, 
or  by  heredity,  predominantly  like  a  noxious 
plant  or  animal  ?  Unless  some  external 
power,  such  as  the  power  that  Paul  conceives 
to  be  Divine  Grace,  miraculously  saves  him, 
is  he  bound  to  turn  out  ill,  —  to  be  the  beast 
of  prey,  the  victim  of  lust,  the  venomous 
creature,  whom  Paul  portrays  in  these  earlier 
chapters  of  his  letters  to  the  Romans  ? " 

You  well  know  that,  as  to  the  questions 
thus  raised,  there  is  much  to  be  said,  both  for 
and  against  the  predominantly  mischievous 
character  of  the  natural  and  instinctive  pre- 
dispositions of  men ;  and  both  for  and  against 
the  usual  results  of  training,  in  case  of  the 
people  who  make  up  our  social  world.  Paul's 
account  of  this  aspect  of  the  life  of  the 
natural  man  has  both  its  apologists  and  its 
critics. 

I  must  simply  decline,  however,  to  follow 
the  usual  controversies  as  to  the  natural  pre- 
dispositions of  the  human  animal  any  further 

125 


THE    PROBLEM   OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  this  place.  I  have  mentioned  the  familiar 
topic  in  order  to  say  at  once  that  none  of  the 
considerations  which  the  opening  chapters 
of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans  suggest  to  a 
modern  reader  regarding  the  noxious  or  the 
useful  instinctive  predispositions  of  ordinary 
men,  or  even  of  extraordinarily  defective  or 
of  exceptionally  gifted  human  beings,  seem 
to  be  of  any  great  importance  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  genuine  Pauline  doctrine  of 
the  moral  burden  of  the  individual. 

Paul  opened  the  epistle  to  the  Romans  by 
considerations  which  merely  prepared  the 
way  for  his  main  thesis.  His  argument  in 
the  earlier  chapters  is  also  chiefly  preparatory. 
But  his  main  doctrine  concerning  our  moral 
burden  depends  upon  other  considerations 
than  a  mere  enumeration  of  the  vices  and 
crimes  of  a  corrupt  society.  It  depends, 
in  fact,  upon  considerations  which,  as  I 
believe,  are  almost  wholly  overlooked  in 
most  of  the  technical  controversies  concerning 
original  sin,  and  concerning  the  evil  case  of 
the  unregenerate  man. 

126 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

I  shall  venture  to  translate  these  more  sig- 
nificant considerations  which  Paul  empha- 
sizes into  a  relatively  modern  phraseology. 
I  believe  that  I  shall  do  so  in  a  way  that  is 
just  to  Paul's  spirit,  and  that  will  enable  us 
soon  to  return  to  the  text  of  the  seventh  chap- 
ter of  his  epistle  with  a  clearer  understanding 
of  the  main  issue. 


Whoever  sets  out  to  study,  as  psychologist, 
the  moral  side  of  human  nature,  with  the 
intention  of  founding  upon  that  study  an 
estimate  of  the  part  which  good  and  evil  play 
in  our  life,  must  make  clear  to  his  mind  a 
familiar,  but  important,  and  sometimes  neg- 
lected distinction.  This  is  the  distinction 
between  the  conduct  of  men,  upon  the  one 
hand,  and  the  grade  or  sort  of  consciousness 
with  which,  upon  the  other  hand,  their  con- 
duct, whatever  it  is,  is  accompanied. 

Conduct,  as  we  have  already  mentioned, 
results  from  the  training  which  our  heredi- 
tary predispositions,  our  instinctive  tenden- 

127 


THE    PROBLEM    OF   CHRISTIANITY 

cies,  get,  when  the  environment  has  played 
upon  them  in  a  suitable  way,  and  for  a  suffi- 
cient time.  The  environment  which  trains 
us  to  our  conduct  may  be  animate  or  inani- 
mate; although  in  our  case  it  is  very  largely 
a  human  environment.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  we  should  be  clearly  aware  of  what  our 
conduct  in  a  given  instance  is  or  means, 
just  as  it  is  not  necessary  that  one  who  speaks 
a  language  fluently  should  be  consciously 
acquainted  with  the  grammar  of  that  language, 
or  that  one  who  can  actually  find  the  way 
over  a  path  in  the  mountains  should  be  able 
to  give  directions  to  a  stranger  such  as  would 
enable  the  latter  to  find  the  same  way. 

In  general,  it  requires  one  sort  of  training  to 
establish  in  us  a  given  form  of  conduct,  and 
a  decidedly  different  sort  of  training  to  make 
us  aware  of  what  that  form  of  conduct  is, 
and  of  what,  for  us  ourselves,  it  means. 

The  training  of  all  the  countless  higher 
and  more  complex  grades  and  types  of  knowl- 
edge about  our  own  conduct  which  we  can 
find  present  in  the  world  of  our  self-knowledge, 

128 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

is  subject  to  a  general  principle  which  I  may 
as  well  state  at  once.  Conduct,  as  I  have 
just  said,  can  be  trained  through  the  action 
of  any  sort  of  tolerable  environment,  animate 
or  inanimate.  But  the  higher  and  more  com- 
plex types  of  our  consciousness  about  our 
conduct,  our  knowledge  about  what  we  do, 
and  about  why  we  do  it,  —  all  this  more 
complex  sort  of  practical  knowledge  of  our- 
selves, is  trained  by  a  specific  sort  of  environ- 
ment, namely,  by  a  social  environment. 

And  the  social  environment  that  most 
awakens  our  self-consciousness  about  our 
conduct  does  so  by  opposing  us,  by  criticising 
us,  or  by  otherwise  standing  in  contrast  with 
us.  Our  knowledge  of  our  conduct,  in  all 
its  higher  grades,  and  our  knowledge  of  our- 
selves as  the  authors  or  as  the  guides  of  our 
own  conduct,  our  knowledge  of  how  and  why 
we  do  what  we  do,  —  all  such  more  elaborate 
self-knowledge  is,  directly  or  indirectly,  a 
social  product,  and  a  product  of  social  con- 
trasts and  oppositions  of  one  sort  or  another. 
Our  fellows  train  us  to  all  our  higher  grades 
K  129 


of  practical  self-knowledge,  and  they  do  so  by 
giving  us  certain  sorts  of  social  trouble. 

If  we  were  capable  of  training  our  conduct 
in  solitude,  we  should  not  be  nearly  as  con- 
scious as  we  now  are  of  the  plans,  of  the 
ideals,  of  the  meaning,  of  this  conduct.  A 
solitary  animal,  if  well  endowed  with  suitable 
instincts,  and  if  trained  through  the  sort  of 
experimenting  that  any  intelligent  animal 
carries  out  as  he  tries  to  satisfy  his  wants, 
would  gradually  form  some  sort  of  conduct. 
This  conduct  might  be  highly  skilful.  But 
if  this  animal  lived  in  a  totally  unsocial,  in  a 
wholly  inanimate,  environment,  he  would 
meet  with  no  facts  that  could  teach  him  to  be 
aware  of  what  his  conduct  was,  in  the  sense 
and  degree  in  which  we  are  aware  of  our  own 
conduct.  For  he,  as  a  solitary  creature,  would 
find  no  other  instance  of  conduct  with  which  to 
compare  his  own.  And  all  knowledge  rests 
upon  comparison.  It  is  my  knowledge  of 
my  fellows'  doings,  and  of  their  behavior 
toward  me,  —  it  is  this  which  gives  me  the 
basis  for  the  sort  of  comparison  that  I  use 

130 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

whenever  I  succeed  in  more  thoughtfully 
observing  myself  or  estimating  myself. 

If  you  want  to  grasp  this  principle,  consider 
any  instance  that  you  please  wherein  you  are 
actually  and  clearly  aware  of  how  you  behave 
and  of  why  you  behave  thus.  Consider, 
namely,  any  instance  of  a  higher  sort  of  skill 
in  an  art,  in  a  game,  in  business,  —  an  in- 
stance, namely,  wherein  you  not  only  are 
skilful,  but  are  fully  observant  of  what  your 
skill  is,  and  of  why  you  consciously  prefer 
this  way  of  playing  or  of  working.  You 
will  find  that  always  your  knowledge  and  your 
estimate  of  your  skill  and  of  your  own  way 
of  doing,  turn  upon  comparing  your  own  con- 
duct with  that  of  some  real  or  ideal  comrade, 
or  fellow,  or  rival,  or  opponent,  or  critic ; 
or  upon  knowing  how  your  social  order  in 
general  carries  on  or  estimates  this  sort  of 
conduct ;  or,  finally,  upon  remembering  or 
using  the  results  of  former  social  comparisons 
of  the  types  mentioned. 

I  walk  as  I  happen  to  walk,  and  in  general, 
if  let  alone,  I  have  no  consciousness  as  to 

131 


THE. PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

what  my  manner  of  walking  is;  but  let  my 
fellow's  gait  or  pace  attract  my  attention, 
or  let  my  fellow  laugh  at  my  gait,  or  let  him 
otherwise  show  that  he  observes  my  gait; 
and  forthwith,  if  my  interest  is  stirred,  I 
may  have  the  ground  for  beginning  to  observe 
what  my  own  gait  is,  and  how  it  is  to  be  esti- 
mated. 

In  brief,  it  is  our  fellows  who  first  startle 
us  out  of  our  natural  unconsciousness  about 
our  own  conduct;  and  who  then,  by  an  end- 
less series  of  processes  of  setting  us  attractive 
but  difficult  models,  and  of  socially  interfer- 
ing with  our  own  doings,  train  us  to  higher 
and  higher  grades  and  to  more  and  more 
complex  types  of  self-consciousness  regarding 
what  we  do  and  why  we  do  it.  Play  and 
conflict,  rivalry  and  emulation,  conscious 
imitation  and  conscious  social  contrasts  be- 
tween man  and  man,  —  these  are  the  source 
of  each  man's  consciousness  about  his  own 
conduct. 

Whatever  occurs  in  our  literal  social  life, 
and  in  company  with  our  real  fellows,  can  be, 

132 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

and  often  is,  repeated  with  endless  variations 
in  our  memory  and  imagination,  and  in  a 
companionship  with  ideal  fellow-beings  of 
all  grades  of  significance.  And  thus  our 
thoughts  and  memories  of  all  human  beings 
who  have  aroused  our  interest,  as  well  as  our 
thoughts  about  God,  enrich  our  social  environ- 
ment by  means  of  a  wealth  of  real  and  ideal 
fellow-beings,  with  whom  we  can  and  do 
compare  and  contrast  ourselves  and  our  own 
conduct. 

And  since  all  this  is  true,  this  whole  process 
of  our  knowledge  about  our  own  doings,  and 
about  our  plans,  and  about  our  estimates  of 
ourselves,  is  a  process  capable  of  simply 
endless  variation,  growth,  and  idealization. 
Hence  the  variations  of  our  moral  self-con- 
sciousness have  all  the  wealth  of  the  entire 
spiritual  world.  Comparing  our  doings  with 
the  standards  that  the  social  will  furnishes  to 
us,  in  the  form  of  customs  and  of  rules,  we 
become  aware  both  of  what  Paul  calls,  in  a 
special  instance,  "the  law,"  and  of  ourselves 
either  as  in  harmony  with  or  opposed  to  this 

133 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

law.  The  comparison  and  the  contrast  make 
us  view  ourselves  on  the  one  side,  and  the 
social  will,  —  that  is,  "the  law," — on  the 
other  side,  as  so  related  that,  the  more  we 
know  of  the  social  will,  the  more  highly  con- 
scious of  ourselves  we  become;  while  the 
better  we  know  ourselves,  the  more  clearly  we 
estimate  the  dignity  and  the  authority  of  the 
social  will. 

So  much,  then,  for  a  mere  hint  of  the  general 
ways  in  which  our  moral  self-consciousness 
is  a  product  of  our  social  life.  This  self  is 
known  to  each  one  of  us  through  its  social 
contrasts  with  other  selves,  and  with  the  will 
of  the  community.  If  these  contrasts  dis- 
please us,  we  try  to  relieve  the  tension.  If 
they  fascinate,  we  form  our  ideals  accord- 
ingly. But  in  either  case  we  become  conscious 
of  some  plan  or  ideal  of  our  own.  Our  devel- 
oped conscience,  psychologically  speaking,  is 
the  product  of  endless  efforts  to  clear  up,  to 
simplify,  to  reduce  to  some  sort  of  unity  and 
harmony,  the  equally  endless  contrasts  be- 
tween the  self,  the  fellow-man,  and  the  social 

134 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

will  in  general,  —  contrasts  which  our  social 
experience  constantly  reveals  and  renders 
fascinating  or  agonizing,  according  to  the 
state  of  our  sensitiveness  or  of  our  fortunes. 

VI 

These  hints  of  the  nature  of  a  process  which 
you  can  illustrate  by  every  higher  form  and 
gradation  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  men 
have  now  prepared  us  for  one  more  obser- 
vation which,  when  properly  understood, 
will  bring  us  directly  in  contact  with  Paul's 
own  comments  upon  the  moral  burden  of  any 
human  being  who  reaches  a  high  spiritual  level. 

Our  conduct  may  be,  according  to  our 
instincts  and  our  training,  whatever  it  hap- 
pens to  be.  Since  man  is  an  animal  that  is 
hard  to  train,  it  will  often  be,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  social  will  of  our  community, 
more  or  less  defective  conduct.  But  it  might 
also  be  fairly  good  conduct;  and,  in  normal 
people  of  good  training,  it  often  is  so.  In 
this  respect,  then,  it  seems  unpsychological 
to  assert  that  the  conduct  of  all  natural 

135 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

men  is  universally  depraved,  —  however  ill 
Paul  thought  of  his  Gentiles. 

Let  us  turn,  however,  from  men's  conduct 
to  their  consciousness  about  their  conduct; 
and  then  the  simple  and  general  principles 
just  enunciated  will  give  us  a  much  graver 
view  of  our  moral  situation.  Paul's  main 
thesis  about  our  moral  burden  relates  not  to 
our  conduct,  but  to  our  consciousness  about 
our  conduct. 

Our  main  result,  so  far,  is  that,  from  a 
purely  psychological  point  of  view,  my  con- 
sciousness about  my  conduct,  and  conse- 
quently my  power  to  form  ideals,  and  my 
power  to  develop  any  sort  of  conscience,  are 
a  product  of  my  nature  as  a  social  being. 
And  the  product  arises  in  this  way :  Con- 
trasts, rivalries,  difficult  efforts  to  imitate 
some  fascinating  fellow-being,  contests  with 
my  foes,  emulation,  social  ambition,  the 
desire  to  attract  attention,  the  desire  to  find 
my  place  in  my  social  order,  my  interest  in 
what  my  fellows  say  and  do,  and  especially 
in  what  they  say  and  do  with  reference  to 

136 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

me,  —  such  are  the  more  elemental  social 
motives  and  the  social  situations  which  at 
first  make  me  highly  conscious  of  my  own 
doings. 

Upon  the  chaos  of  these  social  contrasts 
my  whole  later  training  in  the  knowledge  of 
the  good  and  the  evil  of  my  own  conduct  is 
founded.  My  conscience  grows  out  of  this 
chaos,  —  grows  as  my  reason  grows,  through 
the  effort  to  get  harmony  into  this  chaos. 
However  reasonable  I  become,  however  high 
the  grade  of  the  conscientious  ideals  to  which, 
through  the  struggle  to  win  harmony,  I 
finally  attain,  all  of  my  own  conscientious  life 
is  psychologically  built  upon  the  lowly  foun- 
dations thus  furnished  by  the  troubled  social 
life,  that,  together  with  my  fellows,  I  must 
lead. 

VII 

But  now  it  needs  no  great  pessimism  to 
observe  that  our  ordinary  social  life  is  one 
in  which  there  is  a  great  deal  of  inevitable 
tension,  or  natural  disharmony.  Such  ten- 

137 


THE    PROBLEM    O.F    CHRISTIANITY 

sion,  and  such  disharmony,  are  due  not 
necessarily  to  the  graver  vices  of  men.  The 
gravest  disharmonies  often  result  merely  from 
the  mutual  misunderstandings  of  men.  There 
are  so  many  of  us.  We  naturally  differ  so 
much  from  one  another.  We  comprehend 
each  other  so  ill,  or,  at  best,  with  such  diffi- 
culty. Hence  social  tension  is,  so  to  speak, 
the  primary  state  of  any  new  social  enter- 
prise, and  can  be  relieved  only  through 
special  and  constantly  renewed  efforts. 

But  this  simple  observation  leads  to  an- 
other. If  our  social  life,  owing  to  the  num- 
ber, the  variety,  and  the  ignorance  of  the 
individuals  who  make  up  our  social  world, 
is  prevailingly  or  primarily  one  in  which 
strained  social  situations,  —  forms  of  social 
tension,  —  social  troubles,  are  present,  and 
are  constantly  renewed,  it  follows  that  every 
individual  who  is  to  reach  a  high  grade  of 
self -consciousness  as  to  his  own  doings,  will 
be  awakened  to  his  observation  of  himself  by 
one  or  another  form  or  instance  of  social 
tension.  As  a  fact,  it  is  rivalry,  or  contest,  or 

138 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

criticism  that  first,  as  we  have  seen,  naturally 
brings  to  my  notice  what  I  am  doing.  And 
the  obvious  rule  is  that,  within  reasonable 
limits,  the  greater  the  social  tension  of  the 
situation  in  which  I  am  placed,  the  sharper 
and  clearer  does  my  social  contrast  with  my 
fellows  become  to  me.  And  thus,  the  greater 
the  social  tension  is,  the  more  do  I  become 
aware,  through  such  situations,  both  about 
my  own  conduct,  and  about  my  plans  and 
ideals,  and  about  my  will. 

In  brief,  my  moral  self-consciousness  is 
bred  in  me  through  social  situations  that  in- 
volve, —  not  necessarily  any  physical  con- 
flict with  my  fellows,  —  but,  in  general,  some 
form  of  social  conflict,  —  conflict  such  as 
engenders  mutual  criticism.  Man  need  not 
be,  when  civilized,  at  war  with  his  fellows  in 
the  sense  of  using  the  sword  against  them. 
But  he  comes  to  self-consciousness  as  a  moral 
being  through  the  spiritual  warfare  of  mutual 
observation,  of  mutual  criticism,  of  rivalry, 
—  yes,  too  often  through  the  warfare  of  envy 
and  of  gossip  and  of  scandal-mongering,  and 

139 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  whatever  else  belongs  to  the  early  training 
that  many  people  give  to  their  own  consciences, 
through  taking  a  more  or  less  hostile  account 
of  the  consciences  of  their  neighbors.  Such 
things  result  from  the  very  conditions  of 
high  grades  of  self-consciousness  about  our 
conduct  and  our  ideals. 

The  moral  self,  then,  the  natural  con- 
science, is  bred  through  situations  that  in- 
volve social  tension.  What  follows  ? 

VIII 

It  follows  that  such  tension,  in  each  special 
case,  indeed  seems  evil  to  us,  and  calls  for 
relief.  And  in  seeking  for  such  relief,  the 
social  will,  in  its  corporate  capacity,  the  will 
of  the  community,  forms  its  codes,  its  custom- 
ary laws ;  and  attempts  to  teach  each  of  us 
how  he  ought  to  deal  with  his  neighbors  so 
as  to  promote  the  general  social  harmony. 
But  these  codes,  —  these  forms  of  customary 
morality,  —  they  have  to  be  taught  to  us  as 
conscious  rules  of  conduct.  They  can  only 
be  taught  to  us  by  first  teaching  us  to  be  more 

140 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

considerate,  more  self-observant,  more  for- 
mally conscientious  than  we  were  before. 
But  to  accomplish  this  aim  is  to  bring  us  to 
some  higher  level  of  our  general  self-conscious- 
ness concerning  our  own  doings.  And  this 
can  be  done,  as  a  rule,  only  by  applying  to 
us  some  new  form  of  social  discipline  which, 
in  general,  introduces  still  new  and  more 
complex  kinds  of  tension,  —  new  social  con- 
trasts between  the  general  will  and  our 
own  will,  new  conflicts  between  the  self 
and  its  world. 

Our  social  training  thus  teaches  us  to  know 
ourselves  through  a  process  which  arouses 
our  self-will ;  and  this  tendency  grows  with 
what  it  feeds  upon.  The  higher  the  training 
and  the  more  cultivated  and  elaborate  is  our 
socially  trained  conscience,  —  the  more  highly 
conscious  our  estimate  of  our  own  value 
becomes,  and  so,  in  general,  the  stronger 
grows  our  self-will. 

This  is  a  commonplace;  but  it  is  precisely 
upon  this  very  commonplace  that  the  moral 
burden  of  the  typical  individual,  trained 

141 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

under  natural  social  conditions,  rests.  If  the 
individual  is  no  defective  or  degenerate,  but 
a  fairly  good  member  of  his  stock,  his  conduct 
may  be  trained  by  effective  social  discipline 
into  a  more  or  less  admirable  conformity  to 
the  standards  of  the  general  will.  But  his 
conduct  is  not  the  same  as  his  own  conscious- 
ness about  his  conduct;  or,  in  other  words, 
his  deeds  and  his  ideals  are  not  necessarily 
in  mutual  agreement.  Meanwhile,  his  con- 
sciousness about  his  conduct,  his  ideals,  his 
conscience,  are  all  trained,  under  ordinary 
conditions,  by  a  social  process  that  begins  in 
social  troubles,  in  tensions,  in  rivalries,  in 
contests,  and  that  naturally  continues,  the 
farther  it  goes,  to  become  more  and  more  a 
process  which  introduces  new  and  more  com- 
plex conflicts. 

This  evil  constantly  increases.  The  bur- 
den grows  heavier.  Society  can,  by  its  ordi- 
nary skill,  train  many  to  be  its  servants, 
—  servants  who,  being  under  rigid  discipline, 
submit  because  they  must.  But  precisely 
in  proportion  as  society  becomes  more  skilled 

142 


in  the  external  forms  of  culture,  it  trains  its 
servants  by  a  process  that  breeds  spiritual 
enemies.  That  is,  it  breeds  men  who,  even 
when  they  keep  the  peace,  are  inwardly 
enemies  one  of  another;  because  every  man, 
in  a  highly  cultivated  social  world,  is  trained 
to  moral  self-consciousness  by  his  social 
conflicts.  And  these  same  men  are  inwardly 
enemies  of  the  collective  social  will  itself, 
because  in  a  highly  cultivated  social  order 
the  social  will  is  oppressively  vast,  and  the 
individual  is  trained  to  self-consciousness  by 
a  process  which  shows  him  the  contrast 
between  his  own  will  and  this,  which  so  far 
seems  to  him  a  vast  impersonal  social  will. 
He  may  obey.  That  is  conduct.  But  he 
will  naturally  revolt  inwardly ;  and  that  is 
his  inevitable  form  of  spiritual  self-assertion, 
so  long  as  he  is  trained  to  self-consciousness 
in  this  way,  and  is  still  without  the  spiritual 
transformations  that  some  higher  form  of 
love  for  the  community,  —  some  form  of 
loyalty,  and  that  alone,  —  can  bring. 

This  revolt  will  tend  to  increase  as  culture 
143 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

advances.  High  social  cultivation  breeds 
spiritual  enmities.  For  it  trains  what  we  in 
our  day  call  individualism,  and,  upon  pre- 
cisely its  most  cultivated  levels,  glories  in 
creating  highly  conscious  individuals.  But 
these  individuals  are  brought  to  conscious- 
ness by  their  social  contrasts  and  conflicts. 
Their  very  consciences  are  tainted  by  the 
original  sin  of  social  contentiousness.  The 
higher  the  cultivation,  the  vaster  and  deeper 
are  precisely  the  more  spiritual  and  the  more 
significant  of  these  inward  and  outward  con- 
flicts. Cultivation  breeds  civilized  conduct; 
it  also  breeds  conscious  independence  of 
spirit  and  deep  inner  opposition  to  all  mere 
external  authority. 

Before  this  sort  of  moral  evil  the  moral 
individual,  thus  cultivated,  is,  if  viewed 
merely  as  a  creature  of  cultivation,  power- 
less. His  very  conscience  is  the  product  of 
spiritual  warfare,  and  its  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil  is  tainted  by  its  origin.  The  burden 
grows ;  and  the  moral  individual  cannot 
bear  it,  unless  his  whole  type  of  self-conscious- 

144 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

ness  is  transformed  by  a  new  spiritual  power 
which  this  type  of  cultivation  can  never  of 
itself  furnish. 

For  the  moral  cultivation  just  described  is 
cultivation  in  "the  law"  ;  that  is,  in  the  rules 
of  the  social  will.  But  such  cultivation 
breeds  individualism;  that  is,  breeds  con- 
sciousness of  self-will.  And  the  burden  of 
this  self-will  increases  with  cultivation. 

As  we  all  know,  individualism,  viewed  as  a 
highly  potent  social  tendency,  is  a  product  of 
high  cultivation.  It  is  also  a  relatively  mod- 
ern product  of  such  cultivation.  Savages 
appear  to  know  little  about  individualism. 
Where  tribal  custom  is  almighty,  the  indi- 
vidual is  trained  to  conduct,  but  not  to  a 
high  grade  of  self -consciousness.  Hence  the 
individual,  in  a  primitive  community,  sub- 
mits ;  but  also  he  has  no  very  elaborate  con- 
science. Among  most  ancient  peoples,  indi- 
vidualism was  still  nearly  unknown. 

Two  ancient  peoples,  living  under  special 
conditions  and  possessing  an  extraordinary 
genius,  developed  very  high  grades  of  indi- 
i  145 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

vidualism.  One  of  these  peoples  was  Israel, 
—  especially  that  fragment  of  later  Israel 
to  which  Judaism  was  due.  Paul  well  knew 
what  was  the  nature  and  the  meaning  of  just 
that  high  development  of  individuality  which 
Judaism  had  in  his  day  made  possible. 

The  other  one  of  these  peoples  was  the 
Greek  people.  Their  individualism,  their 
high  type  of  self -consciousness  regarding  con- 
duct, showed  what  is  meant  by  being,  as  every 
highly  individualistic  type  of  civilization 
since  their  day  has  been,  characteristically 
merciless  to  individuals.  Greek  individual- 
ism devoured  its  own  children.  The  con- 
sciousness of  social  opposition  determined  the 
high  grade  of  self-consciousness  of  the  Greek 
genius.  It  also  determined  the  course  of 
Greek  history  and  politics ;  and  so  the 
greatest  example  of  national  genius  which  the 
world  has  ever  seen  promptly  destroyed  its 
own  life,  just  because  its  self-consciousness 
was  due  to  social  conflicts  and  intensified 
them.  The  original  sin  of  its  own  cultivation 
was  the  doom  of  that  cultivation. 

146 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

In  the  modern  world  the  habit  of  forming 
a  high  grade  of  individual  consciousness  has 
now  become  settled.  We  have  learned  the 
lesson  that  Israel  and  Greece  taught.  Hence 
we  speak  of  personal  moral  independence  as 
if  it  were  our  characteristic  spiritual  ideal. 
This  ideal  is  now  fostered  still  more  highly 
than  ever  before,  —  is  fostered  by  the  vast- 
ness  of  our  modern  social  forces,  and  by  the 
way  in  which  these  forces  are  to-day  used  to 
train  the  individual  consciousness  which  op- 
poses itself  to  them,  and  which  is  trained  to 
this  sort  of  opposition. 

The  result  is  that  the  training  of  the  culti- 
vated individual,  under  modern  conditions, 
uses,  on  the  one  hand,  all  the  motives  of 
what  Paul  calls  "the  flesh,"  —  all  the  natural 
endowment  of  man  the  social  being,  —  but 
develops  this  fleshly  nature  so  that  it  is 
trained  to  self-consciousness  by  emphasizing 
every  sort  and  grade  of  more  skilful  oppo- 
sition to  the  very  social  will  that  trains  it. 
Our  modern  world  is  therefore  peculiarly 
fitted  to  illustrate  the  thesis  of  Paul's  seventh 

147 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

chapter  of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans.  To 
that  chapter  let  us  now,  for  a  moment, 
return. 

IX 

The  difficulty  of  the  argument  of  Paul's 
seventh  chapter  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  speak- 
ing of  our  sinful  nature,  he  emphasizes  three 
apparently  conflicting  considerations:  First, 
he  asserts  that  sinfulness  belongs  to  our  ele- 
mental nature,  to  our  flesh  as  it  is  at  birth; 
secondly,  he  insists  that  sin  is  not  cured  but 
increased  by  cultivation,  unless  the  power  of 
the  Divine  Spirit  intervenes  and  transforms 
us  into  new  creatures;  thirdly,  he  declares 
that  our  sinfulness  belongs  not  to  especially 
defective  or  degenerate  sinners,  but  to  the 
race  in  its  corporate  capacity,  so  that  no  one 
is  privileged  to  escape  by  any  good  deed  of 
his  own,  since  we  are  all  naturally  under 
the  curse. 

To  the  first  consideration  many  modern 
men  reply  that  at  birth  we  have  only  untrained 
instinctive  predispositions,  which  may,  under 

148 


MORALBURDENOFTHEINDIVIDUAL 

training,  turn  out  well  or  ill,  but  which,  until 
training  turns  them  into  conduct,  are  innocent. 

This  comment  is  true,  but  does  not  touch 
Paul's  main  thesis,  which  is  that,  being  as  to 
the  flesh  what  we  are,  —  that  is,  being  essen- 
tially social  animals,  —  all  our  natural  moral 
cultivation,  if  successful,  can  only  make  us 
aware  of  our  sinfulness.  "Howbeit,  I  had 
not  known  sin  but  for  the  law."  It  is  pre- 
cisely this  thesis  which  the  natural  history  of 
the  training  of  our  ordinary  moral  self-con- 
sciousness illustrates.  This  training  usually 
takes  place  through  impressing  the  social  will 
upon  the  individual  by  means  of  discipline. 
The  result  must  be  judged  not  by  the  acci- 
dental fortunes  of  this  or  of  that  formally 
virtuous  or  obviously  vicious  individual.  The 
true  problem  lies  deeper  than  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  look.  It  is  just  that  problem  which 
Paul  understands. 

Train  me  to  morality  by  the  ordinary  modes 
of  discipline  and  you  do  two  things :  First, 
and  especially  under  modern  conditions,  you 
teach  me  so-called  independence,  self-reliance. 

149 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

You  teach  me  to  know  and  to  prize  from  the 
depths  of  my  soul,  my  own  individual  will. 
The  higher  the  civilization  in  which  this  mode 
of  training  is  followed,  the  more  I  become 
an  individualist  among  mutually  hostile  indi- 
vidualists, a  citizen  of  a  world  where  all  are 
consciously  free  to  think  ill  of  one  another,  and 
to  say,  to  every  external  authority  :  "My  will, 
not  thine,  be  done." 

But  this  teaching  of  independence  is  also 
a  teaching  of  distraction  and  inner  despair. 
For,  if  I  indeed  am  intelligent,  I  also  learn 
that,  in  a  highly  cultivated  civilization,  the 
social  will  is  mighty,  and  daily  grows  mightier, 
and  must,  ordinarily  and  outwardly,  prevail 
unless  chaos  is  to  come.  Hence  you  indeed 
may  discipline  me  into  obedience,  but  it  is  a 
distracted  and  wilful  obedience,  which  con- 
stantly wars  with  the  very  dignity  of  spirit 
which  my  training  teaches  me  to  revere.  On 
the  one  hand,  as  reasonable  being,  I  say : 
"I  ought  to  submit;  for  law  is  mighty; 
and  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  bring  anarchy." 
So  much  I  say,  if  I  am  indeed  successfully 

150 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

trained.  But  I  will  not  obey  with  the  inner 
man.  For  I  am  the  being  of  inalienable 
individual  rights,  of  unconquerable  indepen- 
dence. I  have  my  own  law  in  my  own  mem- 
bers, which,  however  I  seem  to  obey,  is  at 
war  with  the  social  will.  I  am  the  divided 
self.  The  more  I  struggle  to  escape  through 
my  moral  cultivation,  the  more  I  discern  my 
divided  state.  Oh,  wretched  man  that  I 
am  ! 

Now  this  my  divided  state,  this  my  dis- 
traction of  will,  is  no  mishap  of  my  private 
fortune.  It  belongs  to  the  human  race,  as  a 
race  capable  of  high  moral  cultivation.  It 
is  the  misfortune,  the  doom  of  man  the  social 
animal,  if  you  train  him  through  the  disci- 
pline of  social  tension,  through  troubles  with 
his  neighbors,  through  opposition  and  through 
social  conflict,  through  what  Whistler  called 
"the  gentle  art  of  making  enemies."  This, 
apart  from  all  legends,  is  Paul's  thesis;  and 
it  is  true  to  human  nature.  The  more  outer 
law  there  is  in  our  cultivation,  the  more  inner 
rebellion  there  is  in  the  very  individuals  whom 

151 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

our  cultivation  creates.  And  this  moral  bur- 
den of  the  individual  is  also  the  burden  of  the 
race,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  race  that  is 
social  in  a  human  sense. 

Possibly  all  this  may  still  seem  to  you  the 
mere  construction  of  a  theorist.  And  yet  an 
age  that,  like  our  own,  faces  in  new  forms 
the  conflicts  between  what  we  often  name 
individualism  and  collectivism,  —  a  time  such 
as  the  present  one,  when  every  new  enlarge- 
ment of  our  vast  corporations  is  followed  by 
a  new  development  of  strikes  and  of  industrial 
conflicts,  —  a  time,  I  say,  such  as  ours  ought 
to  know  where  the  original  sin  of  our  social 
nature  lies. 

For  our  time  shows  us  that  individualism 
and  collectivism  are  tendencies,  each  of  which, 
as  our  social  order  grows,  intensifies  the  other. 
The  more  the  social  will  expresses  itself  in 
vast  organizations  of  collective  power,  the 
more  are  individuals  trained  to  be  aware  of 
their  own  personal  wants  and  choices  and 
ideals,  and  of  the  vast  opportunities  that  would 
be  theirs  if  they  could  but  gain  control  of 

152 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

these  social  forces.  The  more,  in  sum,  does 
their  individual  self-will  become  conscious, 
deliberate,  cultivated,  and  therefore  danger- 
ously alert  and  ingenious. 

Yet,  if  the  individuals  in  question  are 
highly  intelligent,  and  normally  orderly  in 
their  social  habits,  their  self-will,  thus  for- 
cibly kept  awake  and  watchful  through  the 
very  powers  which  the  collective  will  has 
devised,  is  no  longer,  in  our  own  times,  a 
merely  stupid  attempt  to  destroy  all  social 
authority.  It  need  not  be  childishly  vicious 
or  grossly  depraved,  like  Paul's  Gentiles  in 
his  earlier  chapters  of  the  epistle  to  the 
Romans.  It  is  a  sensitive  self-will,  which 
feels  the  importance  of  the  social  forces,  and 
which  wants  them  to  grow  more  powerful, 
so  that  haply  they  may  be  used  by  the  indi- 
vidual himself. 

And  so,  when  opportunity  offers,  the  indi- 
vidual self-will  casts  its  vote  in  favor  of  new 
devices  to  enrich  or  to  intensify  the  expres- 
sion of  the  collective  will.  For  it  desires 
social  powers.  It  wants  them  for  its  own 

153 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

use.  Hence,  in  its  rebellion  against  authority, 
when  such  rebellion  arises,  it  is  a  consciously 
divided  self-will,  which  takes  in  our  day  no 
form  more  frequently  than  the  general  form  of 
moral  unrest,  of  discontent  with  its  own  most 
ardent  desires.  It  needs  only  a  little  more 
emphasis  upon  moral  or  religious  problems 
than,  in  worldly  people,  in  our  day,  it  displays, 
in  order  to  be  driven  to  utter  from  a  full 
heart  Paul's  word:  "O  wretched  man  that 
I  am!" 

For  the  highly  trained  modern  agitator,  or 
the  plastic  disciple  of  agitators,  if  both  intel- 
ligent and  reasonably  orderly  in  habits,  is 
intensely  both  an  individualist  and  a  man  who 
needs  the  collective  will,  who  in  countless 
ways  and  cases  bows  to  that  will,  and  votes 
for  it,  and  increases  its  power.  The  indi- 
vidualism of  such  a  man  wars  with  his  own 
collectivism ;  while  each,  as  I  insist,  tends  to 
inflame  the  other.  As  an  agitator,  the  typi- 
cally restless  child  of  our  age  often  insists 
upon  heaping  up  new  burdens  of  social 
control,  —  control  that  he  indeed  intends  to 

154 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

have  others  feel  rather  than  himself.  As 
individualist,  longing  to  escape,  perhaps  from 
his  economic  cares,  perhaps  from  the  mar- 
riage bond,  such  a  highly  intelligent  agitator 
may  speak  rebelliously  of  all  restrictions, 
declare  Nietzsche  to  be  his  prophet,  and  set 
out  to  be  a  Superman  as  if  he  were  no  social 
animal  at  all.  Wretched  man,  by  reason 
of  his  divided  will,  he  is ;  and  he  needs  only 
a  little  reflection  to  observe  the  fact. 

But  note :  These  are  no  mere  accidents 
of  our  modern  world.  The  division  of  the 
self  thus  determined,  and  thus  increasing  in 
our  modern  cultivation,  is  not  due  to  the 
chance  defects  of  this  or  of  that  more  or  less 
degenerate  individual.  Nor  is  it  due  merely 
to  a  man's  more  noxious  instincts.  This 
division  is  due  to  the  very  conditions  to  which 
the  development  of  self-consciousness  is  sub- 
ject, not  only  in  our  present  social  order,  but 
in  every  civilization  which  has  reached  as 
high  a  grade  of  self-consciousness  as  that 
which  Paul  observed  in  himself  and  in  his 
own  civilization. 

155 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  moral  burden  of  the  individual,  as 
Paul  conceives  it,  and  as  human  nature  makes 
it  necessary,  has  now  been  characterized.  The 
legend  of  Adam's  transgression  made  the  fall 
of  man  due  to  the  sort  of  self -consciousness, 
to  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  which  the 
crafty  critical  remarks  of  the  wise  serpent 
first  suggested  to  man,  and  which  the  result- 
ing transgression  simply  emphasized.  What 
Paul's  psychology,  translated  into  more 
modern  terms,  teaches,  is  that  the  moral 
self-consciousness  of  every  one  of  us  gets  its 
cultivation  from  our  social  order  through  a 
process  which  begins  by  craftily  awakening 
us,  as  the  serpent  did  Eve,  through  critical 
observations,  and  which  then  fascinates  our 
divided  will  by  giving  us  the  serpent's  coun- 
sels. "Ye  shall  be  as  gods."  This  is  the  lore 
of  all  individualism,  and  the  vice  of  all  our 
worldly  social  ambitions.  The  resulting  dis- 
eases of  self-consciousness  are  due  to  the  in- 
most nature  of  our  social  race. 

156 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

They  belong  to  its  very  essence  as  a  social 
race.  They  increase  with  cultivation.  The 
individual  cannot  escape  from  the  results  of 
them  through  any  deed  of  his  own.  For  his 
will  is  trained  by  a  process  which  taints  his 
conscience  with  the  original  sin  of  self-will, 
of  clever  hostility  to  the  very  social  order 
upon  which  he  constantly  grows  more  and 
more  consciously  dependent. 

What  is  the  remedy  ?  What  is  the  escape  ? 
Paul's  answer  is  simple.  To  his  mind  a  new 
revelation  has  been  made,  from  a  spiritual 
realm  wholly  above  our  social  order  and  its 
conflicts.  Yet  this  revelation  is,  in  a  new 
way,  social.  For  it  tells  us:  "There  is  a 
certain  divinely  instituted  community.  It 
is  no  mere  collection  of  individuals,  with  laws 
and  customs  and  quarrels.  Nor  is  its  unity 
merely  that  of  a  mighty  but,  to  our  own  will, 
an  alien  power.  Its  indwelling  spirit  is  con- 
crete and  living,  but  is  also  a  loving  spirit. 
It  is  the  body  of  Christ.  The  risen  Lord 
dwells  in  it,  and  is  its  life.  It  is  as  much  a 
person  as  he  was  when  he  walked  the  earth. 

157 


THE    PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

And  he  is  as  much  the  spirit  of  that  community 
as  he  is  a  person.  Love  that  community ; 
let  its  spirit,  through  this  love,  become  your 
own.  Let  its  Lord  be  your  Lord.  Be  one 
in  him  and  with  him  and  with  his  Church. 
And  lo  !  the  natural  self  is  dead.  The  new 
life  takes  possession  of  you.  You  are  a  new 
creature.  The  law  has  no  dominion  over 
you.  In  the  universal  community  you  live 
in  the  spirit ;  and  hence  for  the  only  self,  the 
only  self -consciousness,  the  only  knowledge 
of  your  own  deeds  which  you  possess  or 
tolerate :  these  are  one  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  and  of  the  community." 

Translated  into  the  terms  that  I  ventured 
to  use  in  our  last  lecture,  Paul's  doctrine  is 
that  salvation  comes  through  loyalty. 
Loyalty  involves  an  essentially  new  type  of 
self -consciousness,  —  the  consciousness  of  one 
who  loves  a  community  as  a  person.  Not 
social  training,  but  the  miracle  of  this  love, 
creates  the  new  type  of  self-consciousness. 

Only  (as  Paul  holds)  you  must  find  the 
universal  community  to  which  to  be  loyal ; 

158 


MORAL  BURDEN  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

and  you  must  learn  to  know  its  Lord,  whose 
body  it  is,  and  whose  spirit  is  its  life. 

Paul  is  assured  that  he  knows  this  universal 
community  and  this  Lord.  But,  apart  from 
Paul's  religious  faith,  the  perfectly  human 
truth  remains  that  loyalty  (which  is  the  love 
of  a  community  conceived  as  a  person  on  a 
level  superior  to  that  of  any  human  individual) 
—  loyalty,  —  and  the  devotion  of  the  self  to 
the  cause  of  the  community,  —  loyalty,  is  the 
only  cure  for  the  natural  warfare  of  the  col- 
lective and  of  the  individual  will,  —  a  war- 
fare which  no  moral  cultivation  without 
loyalty  can  ever  end,  but  which  all  cultiva- 
tion, apart  from  such  devoted  and  trans- 
forming love  of  the  community,  only  inflames 
and  increases. 

Thus  the  second  of  the  essential  ideas  of 
Christianity  illustrates  the  first,  and  is  in 
turn  illumined  by  the  first.  This,  I  believe 
is  the  deeper  sense  and  truth  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  inherent  moral  taint  of  the  social 
individual. 


159 


IV 

THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  REALM  OF  GRACE 

fin  HE  Christian  world  has  been  still 
-*-  more  deeply  influenced  by  the  apostle 
Paul's  teaching  concerning  the  divine  grace 
that  saves,  than  by  his  account  of  the  moral 
burden  of  the  individual.  The  traditional 
lore  of  salvation  is  more  winning,  and,  in 
many  respects,  less  technical,  than  is  the 
Christian  teaching  regarding  our  lost  state. 

The  present  lecture  is  to  be  devoted  to  a 
study  of  some  aspects  of  the  doctrine  of  grace. 
Yet,  since  our  moral  burden,  and  our  escape 
from  that  burden,  are  matters  intimately  con- 
nected, we  shall  find  that  both  topics  belong  to 
the  exposition  of  the  same  essential  Christian 
idea,  and  that,  at  the  same  time,  they  throw  new 
light  upon  the  first  of  the  three  essential  Chris- 
tian ideas,  the  idea  of  the  universal  community. 
Our  present  task  will  therefore  enable  us  to 
reach  a  new  stage  in  our  survey  of  the  larger 
connections  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life. 

163 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


Christianity  is  most  familiarly  known  as  a 
religion  of  love,  and  this  view,  as  far  as  it 
extends,  is  a  true  view  of  Christianity.  Our 
second  lecture  has  shown  us,  however,  that 
this  characterization  is  inadequate,  because 
it  does  not  render  justly  clear  the  nature  of 
the  objects  to  which,  in  our  human  world, 
Christian  love  is  most  deeply  and  essentially 
devoted.  A  man  is  known  by  the  company 
that  he  keeps.  In  its  human  relations,  and 
apart  from  an  explicit  account  of  its  faith  con- 
cerning the  realm  of  the  gods,  or  concerning 
God,  a  religion  can  be  justly  estimated  only 
when  you  understand  what  kinds  and  grades 
of  human  beings  it  bids  you  recognize,  as  well 
as  what  it  counsels  you  to  do  in  presence  of 
the  beings  of  each  grade.  Now,  as  our  second 
lecture  endeavored  to  point  out,  there  are 
in  the  human  world  two  profoundly  different 
grades,  or  levels,  of  mental  beings,  —  namely, 
the  beings  that  we  usually  call  human  individ- 
uals, and  the  beings  that  we  call  communities. 

164 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

Of  the  first  of  these  two  grades,  or  levels, 
of  human  beings,  any  one  man  whom  you  may 
choose  to  mention  is  an  example.  His  organ- 
ism is,  in  the  physical  world,  separate  from 
the  organisms  of  his  fellows.  The  expressive 
movements  of  this  organism,  his  behavior, 
his  gestures,  his  voice,  his  coherent  course  of 
conduct,  the  traces  that  his  deeds  leave  be- 
hind them,  —  these,  in  your  opinion,  make 
more  or  less  manifest  to  you  the  life  of  his 
mind.  And,  in  your  usual  opinion,  his  mind 
is,  on  the  whole,  at  least  as  separate  from  the 
minds  of  other  men,  as  his  organism,  and  his 
expressive  bodily  movements,  are  physically 
sundered  from  theirs. 

Of  the  second  of  these  two  levels  of  human 
beings,  a  well-trained  chorus,  or  an  orchestra 
at  a  concert ;  or  an  athletic  team,  or  a  rowing 
crew,  during  a  contest;  or  a  committee,  or 
a  board,  sitting  in  deliberation  upon  some 
matter  of  business ;  or  a  high  court  consisting 
of  several  members,  who  at  length  reach  what 
legally  constitutes  "the  decision  of  the  court," 
—  all  these  are  good  examples.  Each  one  of 

165 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

these  is,  in  its  own  way,  a  community.  The 
vaster  communities,  real  and  ideal,  which  we 
mentioned,  by  way  of  illustration,  in  our 
second  lecture,  also  serve  as  instances  of  real 
beings  with  minds,  whose  grade  or  level  is 
not  that  of  the  ordinary  human  individuals. 

Any  highly  organized  community  —  so  in 
our  second  lecture  we  argued  —  is  as  truly  a 
human  being  as  you  and  I  are  individually 
human.  Only  a  community  is  not  what  we 
usually  call  an  individual  human  being;  be- 
cause it  has  no  one  separate  and  internally 
well-knit  physical  organism  of  its  own;  and 
because  its  mind,  if  you  attribute  to  it  any 
one  mind,  is  therefore  not  manifested  through 
the  expressive  movements  of  such  a  single 
separate  human  organism. 

Yet  there  are  reasons  for  attributing  to  a 
community  a  mind  of  its  own.  Some  of  these 
reasons  were  briefly  indicated  in  our  second 
lecture ;  and  they  will  call  for  a  further  scru- 
tiny hereafter.  Just  here  it  concerns  my  pur- 
pose simply  to  call  attention  to  the  former 
argument,  and  to  say,  that  the  difference  be- 

166 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

tween  the  individual  human  beings  of  our 
ordinary  social  intercourse,  and  the  com- 
munities, is  a  difference  justly  characterized, 
in  my  opinion,  by  speaking  of  these  two  as 
grades  or  levels  of  human  life. 

The  communities  are  vastly  more  complex, 
and,  in  many  ways,  are  also  immeasurably 
more  potent  and  enduring  than  are  the  indi- 
viduals. Their  mental  life  possesses,  as  Wundt 
has  pointed  out,  a  psychology  of  its  own,  which 
can  be  systematically  studied.  Their  mental 
existence  is  no  mere  creation  of  abstract 
thinking  or  of  metaphor;  and  is  no  more  a 
topic  for  mystical  insight,  or  for  fantastic 
speculation,  than  is  the  mental  existence  of 
an  individual  man.  As  empirical  facts,  com- 
munities are  known  to  us  by  their  deeds,  by 
their  workings,  by  their  intelligent  and  co- 
herent behavior,  just  as  the  minds  of  our 
individual  neighbors  are  known  to  us  through 
their  expressions. 

Considered  as  merely  natural  existences, 
communities,  like  individuals,  may  be  either 
good  or  evil,  beneficent  or  mischievous.  The 

167 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

level  of  mental  existence  which  belongs  to 
communities  insures  their  complexity;  and 
renders  them,  in  general,  far  more  potent 
and,  for  certain  purposes  and  in  certain  of 
their  activities,  much  more  intelligent  than 
are  the  human  individuals  whose  separate 
physical  organisms  we  ordinarily  regard  as 
signs  of  so  many  separate  minds. 

But  a  community,  —  in  so  far  like  a  fallen 
angel,  —  may  be  as  base  and  depraved  as 
any  individual  man  can  become,  and  may  be 
far  worse  than  a  man.  Communities  may 
make  unjust  war,  may  enslave  mankind,  may 
deceive  and  betray  and  torment  as  basely 
as  do  individuals,  only  more  dangerously. 
The  question  whether  communities  are  or 
are  not  real  human  beings,  with  their  own  level 
of  mental  existence,  is  therefore  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  question  as  to  what  worth 
this  or  that  community  possesses  in  the  spir- 
itual world.  And,  in  our  study  of  the  doctrine 
of  grace,  we  shall  find  how  intimately  the 
Christian  teaching  concerning  the  salvation 
of  the  individual  man  is  bound  up  with  the 

168 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

Christian  definition,  both  of  the  saving  com- 
munity and  of  the  power  which,  according  to 
the  Christian  tradition,  has  redeemed  that 
community,  and  has  infused  divine  life  into 
the  level  of  human  existence  which  this  com- 
munity, and  not  any  merely  human  individual, 
occupies. 

n 

To  the  two  levels  of  human  mental  exist- 
ence correspond  two  possible  forms  of  love : 
love  for  human  individuals ;  love  for  com- 
munities. In  our  second  lecture  we  spoke 
of  the  natural  fact  that  communities  can  be 
the  object  of  love;  and  that  this  love  may 
lead  to  the  complete  practical  devotion  of  an 
individual  to  the  community  which  he  loves. 
Such  vital  and  effective  love  of  an  individual 
for  a  community  constitutes  what  we  called, 
in  that  lecture,  Loyalty.  And  when,  in  our 
second  lecture,  the  conception  of  loyalty  as 
the  love  of  an  individual  for  a  being  that  is 
on  the  level  of  a  community  first  entered  our 
argument,  we  approached  this  conception  by 

169 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

using,  as  illustrations,  what  might  be  called 
either  the  more  natural  or  the  more  primitive 
types  of  loyalty,  —  types  such  as  grow  out  of 
family  life,  and  tribal  solidarity,  and  war. 
As  we  pointed  out  in  the  second  lecture, 
Christianity  is  essentially  a  religion  of  loyalty. 
We  have  learned  in  our  third  lecture  that,  for 
Christianity,  the  problem  of  loyalty  is  en- 
riched, and  meanwhile  made  more  difficult, 
by  the  nature  of  that  ideal  or  universal  com- 
munity to  which  Paul  first  invited  his  con- 
verts to  be  loyal. 

Paul  and  his  apostolic  Christians  were  not 
content  with  family  loyalty,  or  with  clan 
loyalty,  or  with  a  love  for  any  community 
that  they  conceived  as  merely  natural  in  its 
origin.  A  miracle,  as  they  held,  had  created 
the  body  of  Christ.  To  this  new  spiritual 
being,  whose  level  was  that  of  a  community, 
and  whose  membership  was  human,  but  whose 
origin  was,  in  their  opinion,  divine,  their  love 
and  their  life  were  due.  Christianity  was  the 
religion  of  loyalty  to  this  new  creation.  The 
idea  involved  has  since  remained,  with  all  its 

170 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

problems  and  tragedies,  essential  to  Chris- 
tianity. 

Our  study  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  indi- 
vidual has  now  prepared  us  for  a  new  insight 
into  the  special  problem  which,  ever  since 
Paul's  time,  Christian  loyalty  has  had  to 
solve.  This  is  no  longer  anywhere  nearly  as 
free  from  complications  as  are  the  problems 
which  family  loyalty  and  clan  loyalty  present, 
manifold  as  those  problems  of  natural  loyalty 
actually  are.  Even  the  idea  of  the  rational 
brotherhood  of  mankind,  of  the  universal 
community  as  the  Stoics  conceived  it,  presents 
no  problems  nearly  as  complex  as  is  the  prob- 
lem which  the  Pauline  concept  of  charity, 
and  of  Christian  loyalty,  has  to  meet. 

For  Paul,  as  you  now  know,  finds  that  the 
individual  man  has  to  be  won  over,  not  to  a 
loyalty  which  at  first  seems,  to  the  fleshly 
mind,  natural,  but  to  an  essentially  new  life. 
The  natural  man  has  to  be  delivered  from  a 
doom  to  which  "the  law"  only  binds  him 
faster,  the  more  he  seeks  to  escape.  And  this 
escape  involves  finding,  for  the  individual 

171 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

man,  a  community  to  which,  when  the  new 
life  comes,  he  is  to  be  thenceforth  loyal  as 
no  natural  clan  loyalty  or  family  loyalty 
could  make  him. 

The  power  that  gives  to  the  Christian  con- 
vert the  new  loyalty  is  what  Paul  calls  Grace. 
And  the  community  to  which,  when  grace 
saves  him,  the  convert  is  thenceforth  to  be 
loyal,  we  may  here  venture  to  call  by  a  name 
which  we  have  not  hitherto  used.  Let  this 
name  be  "The  Beloved  Community."  This 
is  another  name  for  what  we  before  called 
the  Universal  Community.  Only  now  the 
universal  community  will  appear  to  us  in  a 
new  light,  in  view  of  its  relations  to  the  doc- 
trine of  grace.  And  the  realm  of  this  Beloved 
Community,  whose  relations  Christianity  con- 
ceives, for  the  most  part,  in  supernatural 
terms,  will  constitute  what,  in  our  discussion, 
shall  be  meant  by  the  term  "The  Realm  of 
Grace." 


172 


THE   REALM  OF   GRACE 

III 

If  we  suppose  that  the  two  levels  of  human 
mental  existence  have  both  of  them  been 
recognized  as  real,  and  that  hereupon  the 
problem  of  finding  an  ideally  lovable  com- 
munity has  been,  for  a  given  individual,  solved, 
so  that  this  individual  is  sure  of  his  love  and 
loyalty  for  the  community  which  has  won  his 
service,  then,  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
individual,  the  two  levels  of  human  life  will 
indeed  be  no  longer  merely  distinguished  by 
their  complexity,  or  by  their  might,  or  by  their 
grade  of  intelligence.  Henceforth,  for  the 
loyal  soul,  the  distinction  between  the  levels, 
so  far  as  the  object  of  his  loyalty  is  concerned, 
will  be  a  distinction  in  value,  and  a  vast  one. 

The  beloved  community  embodies,  for  its 
lover,  values  which  no  human  individual, 
viewed  as  a  detached  being,  could  even  re- 
motely approach.  And  in  a  corresponding 
way,  the  love  which  inspires  the  loyal  soul  has 
been  transformed ;  and  is  not  such  as  could 
be  given  to  a  detached  human  individual. 

173 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  human  beings  whom  we  distinguish 
in  our  daily  life,  and  recognize  through  the 
seeming  and  the  doings  of  their  separate  or- 
ganisms, are  real  indeed,  and  are  genuinely 
distinct  individuals.  But  when  we  love  them, 
our  love,  however  ideal  or  devoted,  has  its 
level  and  its  value  determined  by  their  own. 
And  if  this  love  for  human  individuals  is  the 
only  form  of  human  love  that  we  know,  both 
our  morality  and  our  religion  are  limited 
accordingly,  and  remain  on  a  correspond- 
ingly lower  level. 

Such  human  love  knows  its  objects  pre- 
cisely as  Paul  declared  that,  henceforth,  he 
would  no  longer  know  Christ,  —  namely, 
"after  the  flesh."  Loyalty  knows  its  object 
(if  I  may  again  adapt  Paul's  word)  "after 
the  Spirit."  For  Paul's  expression  here  refers, 
in  so  far  as  he  speaks  of  human  objects  at  all, 
to  the  unity  of  the  spirit  which  he  conceived 
to  be  characteristic  of  the  Christian  com- 
munity, whereof  Christ  was,  to  the  Apostle's 
mind,  both  the  head  and  the  divine  life. 
Hence  you  see  how  vastly  significant,  for  our 

174 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

view  of  Christianity,  is  a  comprehension  of 
what  is  meant  by  religion  of  loyalty. 

With  this  indication  of  the  connections 
which  link  the  thoughts  of  our  lecture  on  the 
universal  community  with  the  task  which 
lies  next  in  our  path,  let  us  turn,  first  to  Paul's 
own  account  of  the  doctrine  of  grace,  and 
then  to  the  later  development  of  Paul's  teach- 
ings into  those  views  about  the  Realm  of 
Grace  which  came  to  be  classic  for  the  later 
Christian  consciousness.  Our  own  interest 
in  all  these  matters  is  here  still  an  interest, 
first  in  the  foundation  which  the  Christian 
ideas  possess  in  human  nature,  and  secondly 
in  the  ethical  and  religious  values  which  are 
here  in  question.  And  we  still  postpone  any 
effort  to  pass  judgment  upon  metaphysical 
problems,  or  to  decide  the  truth  as  to  tradi- 
tional dogmas. 

IV 

Let  us  next  summarily  review  the  original 
and  distinctively  Pauline  doctrine,  both  of 
our  fallen  state  and  of  the  grace  which  saves. 

175 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  last  lecture  furnished  the  materials  for 
such  a  review.  The  pith  of  the  matter  can  be 
expressed,  in  terms  of  purely  human  psychol- 
ogy, thus :  Man's  fallen  state  is  due  to  his 
nature  as  a  social  animal.  This  nature  is 
such  that  you  can  train  his  conscience  only  by 
awakening  his  self-will.  By  self-will,  I  here 
mean,  as  Paul  meant,  man's  conscious  and 
active  assertion  of  his  own  individual  desires, 
worth,  and  undertakings,  over  against  the  will 
of  his  fellow,  and  over  against  the  social  will. 
Another  name  for  this  sort  of  conscious  self- 
will  is  the  modern  term  "  individualism,"  when 
it  is  used  to  mean  the  tendency  to  prefer  what 
the  individual  man  demands  to  what  the  col- 
lective will  requires.  In  general,  and  upon  high 
levels  of  human  intelligence,  when  you  train  in- 
dividualism, you  also  train  collectivism ;  that 
is,  you  train  in  the  individual  a  respect  for  the 
collective  will.  And  it  belongs  to  Paul's  very 
deep  and  searching  insight  to  assert  that  these 
two  tendencies — the  tendency  towards  individ- 
ualism, and  that  towards  collectivism  —  do  not 
exclude,  but  intensify  and  inflame  each  other. 

176 


THE   REALM   OF    GRACE 

Training,  if  formally  successful  in  producing 
the  skilful  member  of  human  society,  breeds 
respect,  although  not  love,  for  "the  law,"  that 
is,  for  the  expression  of  the  collective  will. 
But  training  also  makes  the  individual  con- 
scious of  the  "other  law"  in  "his  members," 
which  "wars  against"  the  law  of  the  social 
will.  The  result  may  be,  for  his  outward 
conduct,  whatever  the  individual's  wits  and 
powers  make  it.  But  so  far  as  this  result  is 
due  to  cultivation  in  intelligent  conduct,  it 
inevitably  leads  to  an  inner  division  of  the 
self,  a  disease  of  self-consciousness,  which 
Paul  finds  to  be  the  curse  of  all  merely  natural 
human  civilization. 

This  curse  is  rooted  in  the  primal  consti- 
tution which  makes  man  social,  and  which 
adapts  him  to  win  his  intelligence  through 
social  conflicts  with  his  neighbors.  Hence 
the  curse  belongs  to  the  whole  "flesh"  of 
man;  for  by  "flesh"  Paul  means  whatever 
first  expresses  itself  in  our  instincts  and  thus 
lies  at  the  basis  ,of  our  training,  and  so  of  our 
natural  life.  The  curse  afflicts  equally  the 
N  177, 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

race  and  the  individual.  Man  is  by  inherit- 
ance adapted  for  this  training  to  self-will  and 
to  inner  division. 

The  social  order,  in  training  individuals, 
therefore  breeds  conscious  sinners ;  and  sins 
both  in  them  and  against  them.  The  natural 
community  is,  in  its  united  collective  will,  a 
community  of  sin.  Its  state  is  made,  by  its 
vast  powers,  worse  than  that  of  the  individual. 
But  it  trains  the  individual  to  be  as  great  a 
sinner  as  his  powers  permit. 

If  you  need  illustrations,  Paul  teaches  you 
to  look  for  them  in  the  whole  social  order,  both 
of  Jews  and  of  Gentiles.  But  vices  and 
crimes,  frequent  as  they  are,  merely  illustrate 
the  principle.  The  disease  lies  much  deeper 
than  outward  conduct  can  show;  and  re- 
spectability of  behavior  brings  no  relief.  All 
are  under  the  curse.  Cultivation  increases 
the  curse.  The  individual  is  helpless  to  es- 
cape by  any  will  or  deed  of  his  own. 

The  only  escape  lies  in  Loyalty.  Loyalty, 
in  the  individual,  is  his  love  for  an  united  com- 
munity, expressed  in  a  life  of  devotion  to 

178 


THE    REALM   OF   GRACE 

that  community.  But  such  love  can  be  true 
love  only  if  the  united  community  both  exists 
and  is  lovable.  For  training  makes  self-will 
fastidious,  and  abiding  love  for  a  community 
difficult. 

In  fact,  no  social  training  that  a  community 
can  give  to  its  members  can  train  such  love 
in  those  who  have  it  not,  or  who  do  not  win 
it  through  other  aid  than  their  training  sup- 
plies. And  no  social  will  that  men  can  in- 
telligently devise,  apart  from  previously  active 
and  effective  loyalty,  can  make  a  community 
lovable.  The  creation  of  the  truly  lovable 
community,  and  the  awakening  of  the  highly 
trained  individual  to  a  true  love  for  that 
community,  are,  to  Paul's  mind,  spiritual 
triumphs  beyond  the  wit  of  man  to  devise, 
and  beyond  the  power  of  man  to  accomplish. 
That  which  actually  accomplishes  these 
triumphs  is  what  Paul  means  by  the  divine 
grace. 


179 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


One  further  principle  as  to  the  human  work- 
ings of  this  grace  must  still  be  mentioned, 
in  order  to  complete  our  sketch  of  the  foun- 
dations which  our  actual  nature,  disordered 
though  it  be,  furnishes,  not  for  the  compre- 
hension of  this  miracle  of  saving  love,  but  for 
an  account  of  the  conditions  under  which 
the  miracle  takes  place,  so  far  as  these  condi- 
tions can  fall  under  our  human  observation. 

Natural  love  of  individuals  for  communities, 
as  we  saw  in  our  second  lecture,  appears  in 
case  of  family  loyalty,  and  in  case  of  patriot- 
ism ;  and  seems  to  involve  no  miracle  of  grace. 
But  such  love  of  an  individual  for  a  commu- 
nity, in  so  far  as  such  love  is  the  product  of  our 
ordinary  human  nature,  tends  to  be  limited 
or  hindered  by  the  influences  of  cultivation, 
and  is  blindly  strongest  in  those  who  have 
not  yet  reached  high  grades  of  cultivation. 
It  arises  as  mother-love  or  as  tribal  solidarity 
arises,  from  the  depths  of  our  still  unconscious 
social  nature.  The  infant  or  the  child  loves 

180 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

its  home ;  the  mother,  her  babe ;  the  primi- 
tive man,  his  group. 

But  loyalty  of  the  type  that  is  in  question 
when  our  salvation,  in  Paul's  sense  of  salva- 
tion, is  to  be  won,  is  the  loyalty  which  springs 
up  after  the  individual  self-will  has  been  trained 
through  the  processes  just  characterized.  It 
is  the  loyalty  that  conquers  us,  even  when  we 
have  become  enemies  of  the  law.  It  finds  us 
as  such  enemies,  and  transforms  us.  It  is 
the  love  which  leads  the  already  alert  and  re- 
bellious self-will  to  devote  all  that  it  has  won 
to  the  cause  which  henceforth  is  to  remain, 
by  its  own  choice,  its  beloved. 

Such  loyalty  is  not  the  blind  instinctive 
affection  from  which  cultivation  inevitably 
alienates  us,  by  awakening  our  self-will.  It 
is  the  love  that  overcomes  the  already  fully 
awakened  individual.  We  cannot  choose  to 
fall  thus  in  love.  Only  when  once  thus  in 
love,  can  we  choose  to  remain  lovers. 

Now  such  love  comes  from  some  previous 
love  which  belongs  to  the  same  high  and  diffi- 
cult grade.  The  origin  of  this  higher  form  of 

181 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

loyalty  is  hard  to  trace,  unless  some  leader 
is  first  there,  to  be  the  source  of  loyalty  in 
other  men.  If  such  a  leader  there  is,  his  own 
loyalty  may  become,  through  his  example, 
the  origin  of  a  loyalty  in  which  the  men  of 
many  generations  may  find  salvation.  You 
are  first  made  loyal  through  the  power  of 
some  one  else  who  is  already  loyal. 

But  the  loyal  man  must  also  be,  as  we  have 
just  said,  a  member  of  a  lovable  community. 
How  can  such  a  community  originate  ?  The 
family,  as  we  have  also  remarked,  is  lovable 
to  the  dependent  child.  Yet  often  the  way- 
ward youth  is  socially  trained  to  a  point 
where  such  dependence,  just  because  he  has 
come  to  clear  self -consciousness,  seems  to 
him  unintelligible ;  and  herewith  his  father's 
house  ceases  to  be,  for  him,  any  longer 
lovable. 

Great  loyalty  —  loyalty  such  as  Paul  him- 
self had  in  mind  when  he  talked  of  divine 
grace  —  must  be  awakened  by  a  community 
sufficiently  lovable  to  win  the  enduring  devo- 
tion of  one  who,  like  Paul,  has  first  been 

182 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

trained  to  possess  and  to  keep  an  obstinately 
critical  and  independent  attitude  of  spirit,  - 
an  attitude  such  as,  in  fact,  Paul  kept  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  side  by  side  with  his  own  loyalty, 
and  in  a  wondrous  harmony  therewith. 

Such  a  marvellous  union  of  unconquerable 
and  even  wilful  self-consciousness,  with  an 
absolute  loyalty  to  the  cause  of  his  life, 
breathes  in  every  word  of  Paul's  more  contro- 
versial outbursts,  as  well  as  in  all  of  his  more 
fervent  exhortations.  Such  loyalty  is  no 
mere  childhood  love  of  home.  It  comes 
only  as  a  rushing,  mighty  wind. 

In  order  to  be  thus  lovable  to  the  critical 
and  naturally  rebellious  soul,  the  Beloved 
Community  must  be,  quite  unlike  a  natural 
social  group,  whose  life  consists  of  laws  and 
quarrels,  of  a  collective  will,  and  of  individ- 
ual rebellion.  This  community  must  be  an 
union  of  members  who  first  love  it.  The 
unity  of  love  must  pervade  it,  before  the  indi- 
vidual member  can  find  it  lovable.  Yet 
unless  the  individuals  first  love  it,  how  can  the 
unity  of  love  come  to  pervade  it  ? 

183 


THE    PROBLEM    OF,  CHRISTIANITY 

The  origin  of  loyalty,  if  it  is  to  arise,  — 
not  as  the  childhood  love  of  one's  home 
arises,  unconsciously  and  instinctively ;  but  as 
Paul's  love  for  the  Church  arises,  consciously 
and  with  a  saving  power,  —  in  the  life  of  one 
who  is  first  trained  to  all  the  conscious  en- 
mities of  the  natural  social  order,  —  the 
origin  of  loyalty  seems  thus  to  resemble,  in  a 
measure,  the  origin  of  life,  as  the  modern  man 
views  that  problem.  A  living  being  is  the 
offspring  of  a  living  being.  And,  in  a  similar 
fashion,  highly  conscious  loyalty  presupposes 
a  previous  loyalty,  only  a  loyalty  of  even 
higher  level  than  its  own,  as  its  source.  Loy- 
alty needs  for  its  beginnings  the  inspiring 
leader  who  teaches  by  the  example  of  his 
spirit.  But  the  leader,  in  order  to  inspire  to 
loyalty,  must  himself  be  loyal.  In  order  to  be 
loyal,  he  must  himself  have  found,  or  have 
founded,  his  lovable  community.  And  this, 
in  order  to  be  lovable,  and  a  community, 
must  already  consist  of  loyal  and  loving  mem- 
bers. It  cannot  win  the  love  of  the  lost  soul 
who  is  to  be  saved,  unless  it  already  consists 

184 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

of  those  who  have  been  saved  by  their  love 
for  it.  One  moves  thus  in  a  circle.  Only 
some  miracle  of  grace  (as  it  would  seem)  can 
initiate  the  new  life,  either  in  the  individuals 
who  are  to  love  communities,  or  in  the  com- 
munities that  are  to  be  worthy  of  their  love. 

VI 

If  the  miracle  occurs,  and  then  works 
according  to  the  rules  which,  in  fact,  the  con- 
tagion of  love  usually  seems  to  follow,  the  one 
who  effects  the  first  great  transformation  and 
initiates  the  high  type  of  loyalty  in  the  dis- 
tracted social  world  must,  it  would  seem, 
combine  in  himself,  in  some  way,  the  nature 
which  a  highly  trained  social  individual  de- 
velops as  he  becomes  self-conscious,  with  the 
nature  which  a  community  possesses  when 
it  becomes  intimately  united  in  the  bonds  of 
brotherly  love,  so  that  it  is  "one  undivided 
soul  of  many  a  soul." 

For  the  new  life  of  loyalty,  if  it  first  appears 
at  all,  will  arise  as  a  bond  linking  many 
highly  self-conscious  and  mutually  estranged 

185 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

social  individuals  in  one ;  but  this  bond  can 
come  to  mean  anything  living  and  real  to 
these  individuals,  only  in  case  some  potent 
and  loyal  individual,  acting  as  leader,  first 
declares  that  for  him  it  is  real.  In  such  a 
leader,  and  in  his  spirit,  the  community  will 
begin  its  own  life,  if  the  leader  has  the  power 
to  create  what  he  loves. 

The  individual  who  initiates  this  process 
will  then  plausibly  appear  to  an  onlooker,  such 
as  Paul  was  when  he  was  converted,  to  be  at 
once  an  individual  and  the  spirit — the  very 
life  —  of  a  community.  But  his  origin  will  be 
inexplicable  in  terms  of  the  processes  which 
he  himself  originates.  His  power  will  come 
from  another  level  than  our  own.  And  of  the 
workings  of  this  grace,  when  it  has  appeared, 
we  can  chiefly  say  this :  That  such  love  is 
propagated  by  personal  example,  although 
how,  we  cannot  explain. 

We  know  how  Paul  conceives  the  beginning 
of  the  new  life  wherein  Christian  salvation 
is  to  be  found.  This  beginning  he  refers  to 
the  work  of  Christ.  The  Master  was  an 

186 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

individual  man.  To  Paul's  mind,  his  mission 
was  divine.  He  both  knew  and  loved  his 
community  before  it  existed  on  earth ;  for 
his  foreknowledge  was  one  with  that  of  the 
God  whose  will  he  came  to  accomplish.  On 
earth  he  called  into  this  community  its  first 
members.  He  suffered  and  died  that  it  might 
have  life.  Through  his  death  and  in  his  life 
the  community  lives.  He  is  now  identical  with 
the  spirit  of  this  community.  This,  according 
to  Paul,  was  the  divine  grace  which  began 
the  process  of  salvation  for  man.  In  the 
individual  life  of  each  Christian  this  same  pro- 
cess appears  as  a  new  act  of  grace.  Its  out- 
come is  the  new  life  of  loyalty  to  which  the 
convert  is  henceforth  devoted. 

VII 

With  any  criticism  of  the  religious  beliefs 
of  Paul,  and  with  their  metaphysical  bearings, 
we  are  not  here  concerned.  What  we  have 
attempted,  in  this  sketch,  is  an  indication  of 
the  foundation  which  human  nature  furnishes 
for  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  divine  grace.  The 

187 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

human  problem,  as  you  see,  when  it  is  viewed 
quite  apart  from  the  realm  of  the  gods,  is  the 
problem  of  the  value  and  the  origin  of  loyalty. 

The  value  of  loyalty  can  readily  be  de- 
fined in  simply  human  terms.  Man,  the 
social  being,  naturally,  and  in  one  sense  help- 
lessly, depends  on  his  communities.  Sundered 
from  them,  he  has  neither  worth  nor  wit,  but 
wanders  in  waste  places,  and,  when  he  re- 
turns, finds  the  lonely  house  of  his  individual 
life  empty,  swept,  and  garnished. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  his  communities, 
to  which  he  thus  owes  all  his  natural  powers, 
train  him  by  teaching  him  self-will,  and  so 
teach  him  the  arts  of  spiritual  hatred.  The 
result  is  distraction,  —  spiritual  death.  Es- 
cape through  any  mere  multitude  of  loves  for 
other  individuals  is  impossible.  For  such 
loves,  unless  they  are  united  by  some  supreme 
loyalty,  are  capricious  fondnesses  for  other 
individuals,  who,  by  nature  and  by  social 
training,  are  as  lonely  and  as  distracted  as  their 
lover  himself.  Mere  altruism  is  no  cure  for 
the  spiritual  disease  of  cultivation. 

188 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

No  wonder,  then,  that  early  Buddhism, 
fully  sensible  of  the  disorders  of  self-will  and 
of  the  natural  consciousness,  sees  no  escape 
but  through  the  renunciation  of  all  that  is 
individual,  and  preaches  the  passionless  calm 
of  knowing  only  what  is  no  longer  a  self  at  all. 
If  birth  and  training  mean  only  distraction, 
why  not  look  for  the  cessation  of  all  birth, 
and  the  extinction  of  desire  ? 

Loyalty,  if  it  comes  at  all,  has  the  value  of 
a  love  which  does  not  so  much  renounce  the 
individual  self  as  devote  the  self,  with  all  its 
consciousness  and  its  powers,  to  an  all-em- 
bracing unity  of  individuals  in  one  realm  of 
spiritual  harmony.  The  object  of  such  devo- 
tion is,  in  ideal,  the  community  which  is  ab- 
solutely lovable,  because  absolutely  united, 
conscious,  but  above  all  distractions  of  the 
separate  self-will  of  its  members.  Loyalty 
demands  many  members,  but  one  body; 
many  gifts,  but  one  spirit. 

The  value  of  this  ideal  lies  in  its  vision  of 
an  activity  which  is  endless,  but  always  at 
rest  in  its  own  harmony.  Such  a  vision,  as 

189 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Mr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller  has  well  pointed  out, 
Aristotle  possessed  when,  in  dealing  with  quite 
another  problem  than  the  one  now  directly 
before  us,  he  defined  the  life  of  God,  —  the 
Energeia  of  the  unmoved  mover.  Such  a 
vision,  but  interpreted  in  terms  which  were 
quite  as  human  as  they  were  divine,  Paul 
possessed  when  he  wrote  to  the  Corinthians 
concerning  the  spiritual  gifts.  This  was  Paul's 
beatific  vision,  granted  him  even  while  he  was 
in  the  life  of  earthly  tribulation,  the  vision  of 
the  Charity  which  never  faileth,  —  the  vision 
of  Charity  as  still  the  greatest  of  the  Chris- 
tian graces  in  the  world  whereto  the  saved 
are  to  be  translated. 

The  realm  of  absolute  loyalty,  of  the  Paul- 
ine charity,  is  what  Christianity  opposes  to 
the  Buddhistic  Nirvana.  In  Nirvana  the 
Buddha  sees  all,  but  is  no  longer  an  individual, 
and  neither  desires  nor  wills  anything  what- 
ever. In  Paul's  vision  of  beatitude,  when  I 
shall  know  even  as  I  am  known,  an  endlessly 
restful  spiritual  activity,  the  activity  of  the 
glorified  and  triumphant  Church,  fills  all  the 

190 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

scene.  It  is  an  activity  of  individuals  who 
still  will,  and  perform  the  deeds  of  love,  and 
endlessly  aim  to  renew  what  they  possess,  — 
the  life  of  the  perfected  and  perfectly  lovable 
community,  where  all  are  one  in  Christ. 

Paul's  vision  unites,  then,  Aristotle's  ideal 
of  the  divine  beatitude,  always  active  yet 
always  at  the  goal,  with  his  own  perfectly 
practical  and  concrete  ideal  of  what  the  united 
Church,  as  a  community,  should  be,  and  in 
the  perfect  state,  as  he  thinks,  will  be. 

Thus  the  value  of  the  loyal  life,  and  of  the 
love  of  the  ideal  community,  is  expressible 
in  perfectly  human  terms.  The  problem  of 
grace  is  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  loyalty ; 
and  is  again  a  perfectly  human  problem. 
Paul's  solution,  in  the  opening  of  his  letter 
to  the  Ephesians,  "By  grace  are  ye  saved,  and 
that  not  of  yourselves ;  it  is  the  gift  of  God, " 
is  for  him  the  inevitable  translation  into  re- 
ligious speech  of  that  comment  upon  the  ori- 
gin of  loyalty  which  we  have  just,  in  sum- 
mary form,  stated.  The  origin  of  the  power 
of  grace  is  psychologically  inexplicable,  as  all 

191 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

transforming  love  is.  The  object  to  which 
grace  directs  the  convert's  mind  is  above  the 
level  of  any  human  individual. 

The  realm  of  grace  is  the  realm  of  the 
powers  and  the  gifts  that  save,  by  thus  origi- 
nating and  sustaining  and  informing  the  loyal 
life.  This  realm  contains,  at  the  very  least, 
three  essentially  necessary  constituent  mem- 
bers: First,  the  ideally  lovable  community  of 
many  individuals  in  one  spiritual  bond ; 
secondly,  the  spirit  of  this  community,  which 
is  present  both  as  the  human  individual  whose 
power  originated  and  whose  example,  whose 
life  and  death,  have  led  and  still  guide  the 
community,  and  as  the  united  spiritual  activ- 
ity of  the  whole  community ;  thirdly,  Charity 
itself,  the  love  of  the  community  by  all  its 
members,  and  of  the  members  by  the  com- 
munity. 

To  the  religion  of  Paul,  all  these  things  must 
be  divine.  They  all  have  their  perfectly 
human  correlate  and  foundation  wherever 
the  loyal  life  exists. 


192 


THE   REALM  OF  GRACE 

vin 

We  now  may  see  how  the  characterization 
of  Christianity  as  not  only  a  religion  of  love, 
but  as  also,  in  essence,  a  religion  of  loyalty, 
tends  to  throw  light  upon  some  of  the  other- 
wise most  difficult  aspects  of  the  problem  of 
Christianity.  We  can  already  predict  how 
great  this  light,  if  it  grows,  promises  to  become. 

Christianity  is  not  the  only  religion  in 
whose  conceptions  and  experiences  a  com- 
munity has  been  central.  Loyalty  has  not 
left  itself  without  a  witness  in  many  ages  of 
human  life,  and  in  many  peoples.  And  all 
the  higher  forms  of  loyalty  are,  in  their  spirit, 
religious ;  for  they  rest  upon  the  discovery, 
or  upon  the  faith,  that,  in  all  the  darkness  of 
our  earthly  existence,  we  individual  human 
beings,  separate  as  our  organisms  seem  in 
their  physical  weakness,  and  sundered  as  our 
souls  appear  by  their  narrowness,  and  by  their 
diverse  loves  and  fortunes,  are  not  as  much 
alone,  and  not  as  helpless,  in  our  chaos  of  di- 
vided will,  as  we  seem. 

o  193 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  we  are  members  one  of  another,  and 
members,  too,  of  a  real  life  that,  although 
human,  is  nevertheless,  when  it  is  lovable, 
also  above  the  level  upon  which  we,  the  sepa- 
rate individuals,  live  our  existence.  By  our 
organisms  and  by  our  individual  divisions  of 
knowledge  and  of  purpose,  we  are  chained  to 
an  order  of  nature.  By  our  loyalty,  and  by 
the  real  communities  to  which  we  are  worthily 
loyal,  we  are  linked  with  a  level  of  mental 
existence  such  that,  when  compared  with  our 
individual  existence,  this  higher  level  lies  in 
the  direction  of  the  divine.  Whatever  the 
origin  of  men's  ideals  of  their  gods,  there 
should  be  no  doubt  that  these  gods  have  often 
been  conceived,  by  their  worshippers,  as  the 
representatives  of  some  human  community, 
and  as  in  some  sense  identical  with  that 
community. 

But  loyalty  exists  in  countless  forms  and 
gradations.  Christianity  is  characterized  not 
only  by  the  universality  of  the  ideal  com- 
munity to  which,  in  its  greatest  deeds  and 
ages,  it  has,  according  to  its  intent,  been  loyal ; 

194 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

but  also  by  the  depth  and  by  the  practical 
intensity  and  the  efficacy  of  the  love  towards 
this  community  which  has  inspired  its  most 
representative  leaders  and  reformers ;  and, 
finally,  by  the  profoundly  significant  doc- 
trines and  customs  to  which  it  has  been  led 
in  the  course  of  its  efforts  to  identify  the 
being  of  its  ideal  community  with  the  being  of 
God. 

Other  religions  have  been  inspired  by  loyalty. 
Other  religions  have  identified  a  community 
with  a  divine  being.  And,  occasionally,  — 
yes,  as  the  world  has  grown  wiser  and  more 
united,  increasingly,  —  non-Christian  thinking 
and  non-Christian  religion  have  conceived  an 
ideal  community  as  inclusive  as  mankind, 
or  as  inclusive  as  the  whole  realm  of  beings 
with  minds,  however  vast  that  realm  may  be. 

But,  historically  speaking,  Christianity  has 
been  distinguished  by  the  concreteness  and 
intensity  with  which,  in  the  early  stages  of 
its  growth,  it  grasped,  loved,  and  served  its 
own  ideal  of  the  visible  community,  supposed 
to  be  universal,  which  it  called  its  Church. 

195 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

It  has  further  been  contrasted  with  other 
religions  by  the  skill  with  which  it  gradually 
revised  its  views  of  the  divine  nature,  in  order 
to  be  able  to  identify  the  spirit  that,  as  it 
believed,  guided,  inspired,  and  ruled  this 
Church,  with  the  spirit  of  the  one  whom  it  had 
come  to  worship  as  its  risen  Lord. 

IX 

If  we  bear  these  facts  in  mind,  there  is 
much  in  the  otherwise  so  difficult  history  of 
Christian  dogma  which  we  can  easily  see  in  a 
new  light.  I  myself  am  far  from  being  a 
technical  theologian,  and,  in  coming  to  the 
few  fragments  of  an  understanding  of  the 
meaning  of  the  history  of  dogma  which  I 
possess,  I  owe  much  to  views  such  as,  in 
England,  Professor  Percy  Gardner  has  set 
forth,  both  in  his  earlier  discussions,  and 
notably  in  his  recent  book  on  "The  Religious 
Experience  of  the  Apostle  Paul."  I  also  owe 
new  light  to  the  remarkable  conclusions  which 
Professor  Troeltsch  of  Heidelberg  states,  at 
the  close  of  his  recently  published  volume  on 

196 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

"The  Social  Doctrines  of  the  Christian 
Churches."  1  I  shall  make  no  endeavor  in 
this  place  to  deal  with  those  technical  aspects 
of  the  history  of  dogma  which  lie  beyond  my 
province  as  a  philosophical  student  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life.  But  if  I  attempt 
to  restate  a  very  few  of  the  results  of  others 
in  terms  of  that  view  of  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tian loyalty  which  does  concern  me,  my  word, 
at  this  stage  of  our  discussion,  must  be  as 
follows :  — 

Jesus  unquestionably  taught,  in  the  best- 
attested,  and  in  the  best-known,  of  his  say- 
ings, love  for  all  individual  human  beings. 
But  he  taught  this  as  an  organic  part  of  his 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The 
individual  whom  you  are  bidden  to  love  as 
your  brother  and  your  neighbor  is,  even  while 
Jesus  depicts  him,  transformed  before  your 
eyes.  For,  first,  he  is  no  longer  the  separate 
organism  with  a  separate  mind  and  a  de- 
tached being  and  destiny,  whom  you  ordi- 

1  "  Die  sozialen  Lehren  der  Christlichen  Kirchen  und  Gruppen." 
Tubingen,  1912. 

197 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

narily  loathe  if  he  is  your  enemy,  and  resist  if 
he  endangers  or  oppresses  you.  No,  —  when 
he  asks  your  aid,  —  though  he  be  "the 
least  of  these  my  brethren"  —  he  speaks 
with  the  voice  of  the  judge  of  all  men, 
with  the  voice  that  you  hope  to  hear  saying : 
"Come  ye  blessed  of  my  Father,  for  I  was 
hungered  and  ye  gave  me  meat."  In  other 
words,  the  real  man,  whom  your  eyes  only 
seem  to  see,  but  whom  on  the  level  of  ordinary 
human  intercourse  you  simply  ignore,  ac- 
tually belongs  to  another  level  of  spiritual 
existence,  above  the  level  of  our  present  life 
of  divisions.  The  mystery  of  the  real  being 
of  this  man  is  open  only  to  the  divine  Love. 

If  you  view  your  neighbor  as  your  Father 
would  have  you  view  him,  you  view  him  not 
only  as  God's  image,  but  also  as  God's  will 
and  God's  love.  If  one  asks  for  further  light 
as  to  how  the  divine  love  views  this  man, 
the  answer  of  Jesus,  in  the  parables  is,  in 
substance,  that  this  man  is  a  member  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  obviously  a 
198 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

community.  But  this  community  is  itself  a 
mystery,  —  soon  to  be  revealed,  —  but  so  far 
in  the  visible  world,  of  which  Jesus  speaks, 
not  yet  to  be  discovered.  This  Kingdom  is  a 
treasure  hid  in  a  field.  Its  Master  has  gone 
into  a  far  country.  Watch  and  be  ready. 
The  Lord  will  soon  return.  The  doctrine  of 
Christian  love,  as  thus  taught  by  Jesus,  so  far  as 
the  records  guide  us,  implies  loyalty  to  the 
Kingdom ;  but  expresses  itself  in  forms  which 
demand  further  interpretation,  and  which  the 
Master  intended  to  have  further  interpreted. 
Now  the  apostolic  churches  held  that  those 
visions  of  the  risen  Lord,  upon  the  memory 
and  report  of  which  their  life  as  communities 
was  so  largely  based,  had  begun  for  them 
this  further  interpretation.  For  them  Chris- 
tian loyalty  soon  became  explicit ;  because 
their  community  became  visible.  And  they 
believed  their  community  to  be  the  realization 
of  the  Kingdom ;  because  they  were  sure  that 
their  risen  Lord,  whom  the  reported  and  re- 
corded visions  had  shown,  was  henceforth  in 
their  midst  as  the  spirit  of  this  community. 

199 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  realm  of  grace,  thus  present  to  the 
Christian  consciousness,  needed  to  be  further 
explored.  The  explorers  were  those  who 
helped  to  define  dogmas.  The  later  develop- 
ment of  the  principal  dogmas  of  the  post- 
apostolic  Church  was  due  to  a  process  in  which, 
as  Professor  Troeltsch  persuasively  insists,1 
speculation  and  the  use  of  the  results  of  an- 
cient philosophy  (however  skilful  and  learned 
such  processes  might  be),  were  in  all  the  great 
crises  of  the  history  of  doctrine  wholly  sub- 
ordinate to  practical  religious  motives.1 

1  In  the  summary  of  his  "  Ergebnisse,"  on  p.  967,  op.  cit.,  Troeltsch 
says : — 

"Es  erhellt  die  Abhangigkeit  der  ganzen  christlichen  Vorstel- 
lungswelt  und  des  Dogmas  von  den  soziologischen  Grundbedingungen, 
von  der  jeweiligen  Gemeinschaftsidee.  Das  einzige  besondere 
christliche  Ur-Dogma,  das  Dogma  von  der  Gottlichkeit  des  Christus, 
entsprang  erst  aus  dem  Christuskult  und  dieser  wiederum  aus  der 
Notwendigkeit  der  Zusammenscharung  der  Gemeinde  des  neuen 
Geistes.  Der  Christuskult  ist  der  Organisationspunkt  einer  christ- 
lichen Gemeinschaft  und  der  Schopfer  des  christlichen  Dogmas.  Da 
der  Kultgott  der  Christen,  nicht  wie  ein  anderer  Mysteriengott 
polytheistisch  zu  verstehen  ist,  sondern  die  erlosende  Offenbarung  des 
monotheistischen  Gottes  der  Propheten  darstellt,  so  wird  aus  dem 
Christusdogma  das  Trinitatsdogma.  Alle  philosophischen  und 
mythologischen  Entlehnungen  sind  nur  Mittel  fiir  diesen  aus  der 
inneren  Notwendigkeit  der  christlichen  Kultgemeinschaft  sich 
bildenden  Gedanken."  My  own  text,  at  this  point,  interprets  the 

200 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

To  use  the  phraseology  that  I  myself  am 
obliged  to  prefer :  The  common  sense  of  the 
Christian  Church  had  three  problems  to  solve. 
First :  It  was  loyal  to  the  universal  spiritual 
community ;  and  upon  this  loyalty,  according 
to  its  view,  salvation  depended.  But  this  uni- 
versal community  must  be  something  concrete 
and  practically  efficacious.  Hence  the  visible 
Church  had  to  be  organized  as  the  appearance 
on  earth  of  God's  Kingdom.  For  what  the 
parables  had  left  mysterious  about  the  object 
and  the  life  of  love,  an  authoritative  interpreta- 
tion, valid  for  the  believers  of  those  times,  must 
be  found,  and  was  found  in  the  visible  Church. 

Secondly,  The  life,  the  unity,  the  spirit 
of  the  Church  had  meanwhile  to  be  identified 
with  the  person  and  with  the  spirit  of  the  risen 
and  ascended  Lord,  whom  the  visions  of  the 
first  disciples  had  made  henceforth  a  central 
fact  in  the  belief  of  the  Church. 

results  which  Troeltsch  has  reached,  but  also  translates  them  into  the 
terms  of  my  own  philosophy  of  loyalty.  Lectures  VII,  VIII,  and  XV 
will  show,  in  much  greater  fulness  than  is  here  possible,  how  far- 
reaching  are  the  consequences  which  follow  from  accepting  the  inter- 
pretation of  Christianity  here  merely  sketched. 

•201 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  supernatural  being  whose  body  was 
now  the  Church,  whose  spirit  was  thus  identi- 
fied with  the  will  and  with  the  mind  of  a  com- 
munity, had  once,  as  man,  walked  the  earth, 
had  really  suffered  and  died.  But  since  he 
had  risen  and  ascended,  henceforth  —  pre- 
cisely because  he  was  as  the  spirit  whose  body 
was  this  community,  the  Church  —  he  was 
divine.  Such  was  the  essential  article  of  the 
new  faith. 

Paul  had  already  taught  this.  This  very 
doctrine,  in  its  further  development,  must  be 
kept  by  the  Church  as  concrete  as  the  recorded 
life  of  the  Master  had  been,  as  close  to  real 
life  as  the  work  of  the  visible  Church  was,  and 
as  true  to  the  faith  in  the  divine  unity  and 
destiny  of  the  universal  community,  as  Chris- 
tian loyalty  in  all  those  formative  centuries 
remained. 

And  yet  all  this  must  also  be  held  in  touch 
with  that  doctrine  of  the  unity,  the  personality, 
and  the  ineffable  transcendence  of  God,  — 
that  doctrine  which  was  the  heritage  of  the 
Church,  both  from  the  religion  of  Israel  and 

202 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

from  the  wisdom  of  Greece.  Speaking  in  a 
purely  historical  and  human  sense,  the  dogma 
of  the  Trinity  was  the  psychologically  in- 
evitable effort  at  a  solution  of  this  complex 
but  intensely  practical  problem. 

Loyalty  to  the  community  inspired  this 
solution.  The  problem  of  the  two  natures  of 
Christ,  divine  and  human,  was  also  psycho- 
logically forced  upon  Christianity  by  the  very 
problem  of  the  two  levels  of  our  human  exist- 
ence which  I  have  just  sketched.1 

I  speak  still,  not  of  the  truth,  but  of  the 
psychological  motives  of  the  dogma.  The 
problem  of  the  two  levels  of  human  exist- 
ence is  concrete,  is  practical,  and  exists  for 
all  of  us.  Every  man  who  learns  what  the 
true  goal  of  life  is  must  live  this  twofold 
existence,  —  as  separate  individual,  limited 
by  the  flesh  of  this  maladjusted  and  dying 
organism,  —  yet  also  as  member  of  a  spiritual 
community  which,  if  loyal,  he  loves,  and  in 

1  The  relation  of  the  traditional  doctrine  of  the  "two  natures"  to 
my  present  thesis  regarding  the  "two  levels"  is  something  which  I 
am  solely  responsible  for  asserting. 

203 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

which,  in  so  far  as  he  is  loyal,  he  knows  that 
his  only  true  life  is  hidden,  and  is  lived. 

But  for  Christianity  this  problem  of  the 
two  levels  was  vital,  not  only  for  the  individ- 
ual Christian,  but  also  for  the  interpretation 
of  the  person  of  Christ,  and  for  the  life  of  the 
Church.  Since,  for  historical  and  psycho- 
logical reasons,  the  solution  of  this  problem 
could  not  be,  for  Christianity,  either  poly- 
theistic or  disloyal  in  its  spirit,  the  only 
humanly  natural  course  was,  first,  to  dis- 
tinguish the  transcendent  divine  being  from 
the  concretely  active  spirit  whose  daily  work 
was  that  of  the  Church,  and  then  also  to  dis- 
tinguish both  of  these  from  the  human  in- 
dividuality of  the  Master  who  had  taught 
the  mystery  of  the  Kingdom,  and  who  had 
then  suffered  and  died,  and,  as  was  believed, 
had  risen  to  create  his  Church.  One  had,  I 
say,  clearly  to  distinguish  all  these;  to  de- 
clare them  all  to  be  perfectly  real  facts.  And 
then  one  had  to  unite  and,  in  form,  to  identify 
them  all,  by  means  of  dogmas  which  were 
much  less  merely  ingenious  speculations  than 

204 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

earnest  resolutions  to  act  and  to  believe  what- 
ever the  loyal  Christian  life  and  the  work  of 
the  Church  demanded  for  the  unity  of  human- 
ity and  for  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

The  result  may  be  estimated  philosophically, 
as  one  may  judge  to  be  reasonable.  I  have 
said  nothing  about  the  metaphysical  truth 
of  these  dogmas.  But  the  result  should  not 
be  judged  as  due  to  merely  speculative  sub- 
tleties, or  as  a  practical  degeneration  of  the 
spirit  of  the  early  Church. 

The  common  sense  of  the  Church  was  simply 
doing  its  best  to  express  the  meaning  of  its 
loyalty.  This  loyalty  had  its  spiritual  com- 
munity and  its  human  master.  And  its  prob- 
lems were  the  problems  of  all  loyalty.  And 
it  was  as  a  religion  of  loyalty,  with  a  com- 
munity, a  Lord,  and  a  Spirit  to  interpret,  that 
Christianity  was  led  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
two  natures  of  Christ,  and  to  the  dogma  of  the 
Trinity. 


205 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  psychological  motives  and  the  histori- 
cal background  of  the  capital  dogmas  of  the 
Church  are  therefore  best  to  be  understood 
in  the  light  of  the  conception  of  the  universal 
community,  if  only  one  recognizes  the  his- 
torical fact  that  the  Christian  consciousness 
was  by  purely  human  motives  obliged  to  de- 
fine its  community  as  due  to  the  work  of  the 
Master  who  once  walked  the  earth. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  wherein  the  Pauline  conception  of  the 
Church  as  the  body  of  Christ,  and  of  Christ 
as  the  spirit  of  the  Church,  is  perfectly  united 
with  the  idea  of  the  divine  Word  made  flesh, 
is,  of  all  the  Gospels,  the  one  which,  although 
much  the  farthest  from  the  literal  history  of 
the  human  Master's  earthly  words  and  deeds, 
has  been,  in  its  wholeness,  the  nearest  to  the 
heart  of  the  Christian  world  during  many 
centuries. 

The  Synoptic  Gospels  stir  the  spirits  of 
men  by  the  single  word  or  saying  of  Jesus,  by 

206 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

the  recorded  parable,  or  by  the  impressive 
incident,  be  this  incident  a  legend,  or  a  frag- 
ment of  literally  true  portrayal  (we  often 
know  not  which). 

But  the  Fourth  Gospel  impresses  us  most  in 
its  wholeness.  This  Gospel  faces  the  central 
practical  problem  of  Christianity,  — the  prob- 
lem of  grace,  the  transformation  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  individual  man.  This  trans- 
formation is  to  save  him  by  making  him  a 
dwellei  in  the  realm  which  is  at  once  inacces- 
sibly above  his  merely  natural  level  as  an 
individual,  and  yet  daily  near  to  whatever 
gives  to  his  otherwise  ruined  natural  exist- 
ence its  entire  value.  This  realm  is  the 
realm  of  the  level  of  the  united  and  lovable 
community. 

From  this  realm  comes  all  saving  grace, 
lerever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together 
a  genuine  unity  of  spirit,  —  this  realm 
loes  indeed  begin  to  display  itself.  Other 
;ligions  besides  Christianity  have  illustrated 
lat  fact.  And  whatever,  apart  from  legend 
>n  the  one  hand,  and  speculative  interpreta- 

207 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

tion  on  the  other,  we  human  beings  can  ap- 
preciate, in  a  vital  sense,  concerning  the 
meaning  of  what  we  call  divine,  we  learn 
through  such  love  for  communities  as  arises 
from  the  companionships  of  those  who  are 
thus  joined. 

This  truth  humanity  at  large  has  long  since 
possessed  in  countless  expressions  and  dis- 
guises. But  the  fortune  of  Christianity  led 
the  Church  to  owe  its  foundation  to  teachings, 
to  events,  to  visions,  and,  above  all,  to  a 
practical  devotion,  which,  from  the  first, 
required  the  faithful  to  identify  a  human  in- 
dividual with  the  saving  spirit  of  a  community, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  a  community  which  was 
also  conceived  as  wholly  divine. 

The  union  of  the  concrete  and  the  ineffable 
which  hereupon  resulted,  —  the  union  of  what 
touches  the  human  heart  and  stirs  the  soul  as 
only  the  voice  of  a  living  individual  leader 
can  touch  it,  —  the  complete  union  of  this 
with  the  greatest  and  most  inspiring  of  human 
mysteries,  —  the  mystery  of  loving  member- 
ship in  a  community  whose  meaning  seems 

208 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

divine,  —  this  union  became  the  central  in- 
terest of  Christianity. 

Apart  from  what  is  specifically  Christian  in 
belief,  such  union  of  the  two  levels  has  its 
place  in  our  daily  lives  wherever  the  loyalty  of 
an  individual  leader  shows  to  other  men  the 
way  that  leads  them  to  the  realm  of  the 
spirit.  And  whenever  that  union  takes  place, 
the  divine  and  the  human  seem  to  come  into 
touch  with  each  other  as  elsewhere  they  never 
do. 

The  mystery  of  loyalty,  as  Paul  well  knew, 
is  the  typical  mystery  of  grace.  It  is,  in 
another  guise,  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation. 
According  to  the  mind  of  the  early  Christian 
Church,  one  individual  had  solved  that  mys- 
tery for  all  men. 

He  had  risen  from  the  shameful  death  that, 
for  Christianity,  as  for  its  greatest  rival  Bud- 

lism,  is  not  only  the  inevitable  but  the  just 
loom  of  whoever  is  born  on  the  natural  level 
of  the  human  individual ;  —  he  had  ascended 
to  the  level  of  the  Spirit,  and  had  become,  in 
the  belief  of  the  faithful,  the  spirit  of  a  com- 

209 


THE   PROBLEM    OP    CHRISTIANITY 

munity  whose  boundaries  were  coextensive 
with  the  world,  and  of  whose  dominion  there 
was  to  be  no  end. 

The  Fourth  Gospel  conceives  this  union 
of  the  two  levels  of  spiritual  existence  with  a 
perfect  mastery  at  once  of  the  exalted  poetry 
and  of  the  definitely  practical  concreteness  of 
the  idea,  and  of  the  experiences  which  make 
it  known  to  us.  That  the  conception  of  the 
Logos  —  a  philosophical  conception  of  Greek 
origin  —  is  used  as  the  vehicle  of  the  portrayal 
is,  for  our  present  purpose,  a  fact  of  subor- 
dinate importance. 

What  is  most  significant  is  the  direct  and 
vital  grasp  of  the  new  problem,  as  it  appears 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel.  The  spirit  of  the  infant 
Church  is  here  expressed  with  such  unity  and 
such  pathos  that  all  the  complications  of  the 
new  ideas  vanish ;  and  one  sees  only  the  sym- 
bol of  the  perfectly  literal  and  perfectly 
human  triumph  of  the  Spirit,  —  a  triumph 
which  can  appear  only  in  this  form  of  the 
uniting  of  the  level  of  individuality  with  the 
level  of  perfect  loyalty. 

210 


THE   REALM   OF   GRACE 

In  the  tale  here  presented,  the  dust  of  our 
natural  divisions  is  stirred  into  new  life. 
From  the  tomb  of  individual  banishment  into 
which  the  divine  has  freely  descended,  from 
the  wreck  to  which  every  human  individual  is 
justly  doomed,  the  Word  made  flesh  arises. 

But  "Who  is  this  King  of  Glory  ?"  He  is, 
in  this  portrayal,  the  one  who  says:  "I 
am  the  vine.  Ye  are  the  branches."  The 
Spirit  of  the  community  speaks.  The  Pauline 
metaphor  appears  in  a  new  expression.  But 
it  is  uttered  not  by  the  believer,  but  by  the 
being  who  has  solved  the  mystery  of  the 
union  of  the  self  and  the  community.  He 
speaks  to  individuals  who  have  not  yet  reached 
that  union.  He  comforts  them  :  — 

"Peace  I  leave  with  you ;  my  peace  I  give 
unto  you;  not  as  the  world  giveth  give  I 
unto  you."  This  is  the  voice  of  the  saving 
community  to  the  troubled  soul  of  the  lonely 
individual. 

"Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled,  neither 
let  it  be  fearful.  Ye  have  heard  how  I  said 
to  you,  I  go  away,  and  I  come  to  you." 

211 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

"Abide  in  me,  and  I  in  you.  As  the  branch 
cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself  except  it  abide  in  the 
vine;  so  neither  can  ye,  except  ye  abide  in 
me." 

"These  things  have  I  spoken  unto  you  in 
proverbs :  The  hour  cometh,  when  I  shall 
no  more  speak  unto  you  in  proverbs,  but  shall 
tell  you  plainly  of  the  Father."  "  In  the  world 
ye  shall  have  tribulation ;  but  be  of  good  cheer; 
I  have  overcome  the  world." 

The  loyal  alone  know  whose  world  this  is, 
and  for  whom.  In  the  prayer  with  which  this 
farewell  closes,  the  Jesus  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
prays  :  "Holy  Father,  keep  them  in  thy  name 
which  thou  hast  given  me,  that  they  may  be 
one,  even  as  we  are  one." 

These  are  explicitly  the  words  of  the  spirit 
of  the  universal  community,  whom  mortal 
eyes  no  longer  see,  and  whom,  in  a  lonely 
world  of  tribulation,  men  who  are  doomed  to 
die  now  miss  with  grief  and  expect  with  long- 
ing. But:  "Hast  thou  been  so  long  with 
me,  and  hast  not  known  me  ?  " 

In  such  words  the  Fourth  Gospel  embodies 
212 


THE    REALM    OF    GRACE 

the  living  spirit  of  the  lovable  community. 
This  is  what  the  loyal  soul  knows. 

That  is  why  I  venture  to  say  in  my  own 
words  (though  I  am  neither  apologist,  nor 
Christian  preacher,  nor  theologian),  that 
Christianity  is  a  religion  not  only  of  love,  but 
also  of  loyalty.  And  that  is  why  the  Fourth 
Gospel  tells  us  the  essential  ideas  both  of 
Christianity,  and  of  the  Christian  Realm  of 
Grace,  more  fully  than  do  the  parables,  unless 
you  choose  to  read  the  parables  as  the  voice 
of  the  Spirit  of  the  Church. 

In  all  this  I  have  meant  to  say,  and  have 
said,  nothing  whatever  about  the  truth,  or 
about  the  metaphysical  bases  of  Christian 
dogma. 

I  have  been  characterizing  the  human 
motives  that  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  realm  of  grace,  and  have  been  pointing 
out  the  ethical  and  religious  value  of  these 
motives. 


213 


V 

TIME  AND  GUILT 


IN  Matthew  Arnold's  essay  on  "St.  Paul 
and  Protestantism,"  there  is  a  well-known 
passage  from  which  I  may  quote  a  few  words 
to  serve  as  a  text  for  the  present  lecture. 
These  words  express  what  many  would  call  a 
typical  modern  view  of  an  ancient  problem. 


In  this  essay,  just  before  the  words  which  I 
shall  quote,  Matthew  Arnold  has  been  speak- 
ing of  the  relation  between  Paul's  moral  ex- 
periences and  their  religious  interpretation, 
as  the  Apostle  formulates  it  in  the  epistle  to 
the  Romans.  Referring  to  a  somewhat  earlier 
stage  of  his  own  argument,  Arnold  here  says : 
"We  left  Paul  in  collision  with  a  fact  of 
human  nature,  but  in  itself  a  sterile  fact,  a 
fact  upon  which  it  is  possible  to  dwell  too 
long,  although  Puritanism,  thinking  this  im- 
possible, has  remained  intensely  absorbed 

217 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

in  the  contemplation  of  it,  and  indeed  has 
never  properly  got  beyond  it,  —  the  sense  of 
sin."  "Sin,"  continues  Matthew  Arnold,  "is 
not  a  monster  to  be  mused  on,  but  an  impo- 
tence to  be  got  rid  of.  All  thinking  about  it, 
beyond  what  is  indispensable  for  the  firm 
effort  to  get  rid  of  it,  is  waste  of  energy  and 
waste  of  time.  We  then  enter  that  element  of 
morbid  and  subjective  brooding,  in  which  so 
many  have  perished.  This  sense  of  sin,  how- 
ever, it  is  also  possible  to  have  not  strongly 
enough  to  beget  the  firm  effort  to  get  rid  of  it ; 
and  the  Greeks,  with  all  their  great  gifts, 
had  this  sense  not  strongly  enough ;  its 
strength  in  the  Hebrew  people  is  one  of  this 
people's  mainsprings.  And  no  Hebrew 
prophet  or  psalmist  felt  what  sin  was  more 
powerfully  than  Paul."  In  the  sequel,  Arnold 
shows  how  Paul's  experience  of  the  spiritual 
influence  of  Jesus  enabled  the  Apostle  to  solve 
his  own  problem  of  sin  without  falling  into 
that  dangerous  brooding  which  Arnold  at- 
tributes to  the  typical  Puritan  spirit.  As  a 
result,  Arnold  identifies  his  own  view  of  sin 

218 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

with  that  of  Paul  and  counsels  us  to  judge  the 
whole  matter  in  the  same  way. 

We  have  here  nothing  to  do  with  the  cor- 
rectness of  Matthew  Arnold's  criticism  of 
Protestantism ;  and  also  nothing  to  say,  at 
the  present  moment,  about  the  adequacy 
of  Arnold's  interpretation,  either  of  Paul  or  of 
Jesus.  But  we  are  concerned  with  that 
characteristically  modern  view  of  the  prob- 
lem of  sin  which  Arnold  so  clearly  states  in 
the  words  just  quoted. 

What  constitutes  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual  man,  —  what  holds  him  back  from 
salvation,  —  may  be  described  in  terms  of  his 
natural  heritage,  —  his  inborn  defect  of  charac- 
ter, —  or  in  terms  of  his  training, — or,  finally, 
in  terms  of  whatever  he  has  voluntarily  done 
which  has  been  knowingly  unrighteous.  In 
the  present  lecture  I  am  not  intending  to 
deal  with  man's  original  defects  of  moral 
nature,  nor  yet  with  the  faults  which  his 
training,  through  its  social  vicissitudes,  may 
have  bred  in  him.  I  am  to  consider  that 
which  we  call,  in  the  stricter  sense,  sin. 

219 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Whether  correctly  or  incorrectly,  a  man 
often  views  certain  of  his  deeds  as  in  some 
specially  intimate  sense  his  own,  and  may 
also  believe  that,  amongst  these  his  own 
deeds,  some  have  been  wilfully  counter  to 
what  he  believes  to  be  right.  Such  wrongful 
deeds  a  man  may  regard  as  his  own  sins. 
He  may  decline  to  plead  ignorance,  or  bad 
training,  or  uncontrollable  defect  of  temper, 
or  overwhelming  temptation,  as  the  ground 
and  excuse  for  just  these  deeds.  Before  the 
forum  of  his  own  conscience  he  may  say : 
"That  deed  was  the  result  of  my  own  moral 
choice,  and  was  my  sin."  For  the  time  being 
I  shall  not  presuppose,  for  the  purposes  of 
this  argument,  any  philosophical  theory  about 
free  will.  I  shall  not,  in  this  lecture,  assert 
that,  as  a  fact,  there  is  any  genuinely  free  will 
whatever.  At  the  moment,  I  shall  provision- 
ally accept  only  so  much  of  the  verdict  of  com- 
mon sense  as  any  man  accepts  when  he  says  : 
"That  was  my  own  voluntary  deed,  and  was 
knowingly  and  wilfully  sinful."  Hereupon  I 
shall  ask:  Is  Matthew  Arnold's  opinion 

220 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

correct  with  regard  to  the  way  in  which  the 
fact  and  the  sense  of  sin  ought  to  be  viewed  by 
a  man  who  believes  that  he  has,  by  what  he 
calls  his  own  "free  act  and  deed,"  sinned  ?  Is 
Arnold's  opinion  sound  and  adequate  when 
he  says :  "  Sin  is  not  a  monster  to  be  mused 
on,  but  an  impotence  to  be  got  rid  of." 
Arnold  praises  Paul  for  having  taken  sin  seri- 
ously enough  to  get  rid  of  it,  but  also  praises 
him  for  not  having  brooded  over  sin  except 
to  the  degree  that  was  "indispensable  to  the 
effort  to  get  rid  of  it."  Excessive  brooding 
over  sin  is,  in  Arnold's  opinion,  an  evil  charac- 
teristic of  Puritanism.  Is  Arnold  right  ? 

II 

Most  of  us  will  readily  agree  that  Arnold's 
words  have  a  ring  of  sound  modern  sense 
when  we  first  hear  them  spoken.  Brooding 
over  one's  sins  certainly  appears  to  be  not 
always,  —  yes,  not  frequently,  —  and  surely 
not  for  most  modern  men,  a  convenient 
spiritual  exercise.  It  tends  not  to  the  edifica- 
tion, either  of  the  one  who  broods,  or  of  his 

221 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

brethren.  Brooding  sinners  are  neither  agree- 
able companions  nor  inspiring  guides.  Arnold 
is  quite  right  in  pointing  out  that  Paul's 
greatest  and  most  eloquent  passages  —  those 
amongst  his  words  which  we  best  remember  and 
love  —  are  full  of  the  sense  of  having  some- 
how "got  rid"  of  the  very  sin  to  which  Paul 
most  freely  confesses  when  he  speaks  of  his 
own  past  as  a  persecutor  of  the  Church  and  as 
an  unconverted  Pharisee.  It  is,  then,  the 
escape  from  sin,  and  not  the  bondage  to  sin, 
which  helps  a  man  to  help  his  fellows.  Ought 
not,  therefore,  the  thought  of  sin  to  be  used 
only  under  the  strict  and,  so  to  speak,  artistic 
restraints  to  which  Matthew  Arnold  advises 
us  to  keep  it  subject  ?  You  have  fallen  into 
a  fault ;  you  have  given  over  your  will  to  the 
enemy ;  you  have  wronged  your  fellow;  or, 
as  you  believe,  you  have  offended  God  in  word 
and  deed.  What  are  you  now  to  do  about 
this  fact?  "Get  rid  of  your  sin,"  says 
Matthew  Arnold.  Paul  did  so.  He  did  so 
through  what  he  called  a  loving  union  with 
the  spirit  of  Christ.  As  he  expressed  the  mat- 

222 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

ter,  he  "died"  to  sin.  He  "lived"  henceforth 
to  the  righteousness  of  his  Master  and  of  the 
Christian  community.  And  that  was,  for 
him,  the  end  of  brooding,  unless  you  call  it 
brooding  when  his  task  as  missionary  re- 
quired him  to  repeat  the  simple  confession  of 
his  earlier  life,  —  the  life  that  he  had  lived 
before  the  vision  of  the  risen  Christ  trans- 
formed him.  Matthew  Arnold  counsels  a 
repetition  of  Paul's  experience  in  modern 
fashion,  and  with  the  use  of  modern  ideas 
rather  than  of  whatever  was  narrow,  and  of 
whatever  is  now  superseded,  in  Paul's  reli- 
gious opinions  and  imagery. 

The  modern  version  of  Paulinism,  as  set 
forth  by  Arnold,  would  involve,  first,  a  return 
to  the  primitive  Christianity  of  the  sayings  of 
Jesus;  next,  a  "falling  in  love"  with  the 
person  and  character  of  Jesus ;  and,  finally, 
a  "getting  rid  of  sin"  through  a  new  life  of 
love,  lived  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Matthew 
Arnold's  version  of  the  Gospel  is,  at  the  pres- 
ent moment,  more  familiar  to  general  readers 
of  the  literature  of  the  problem  of  Christianity 

223 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

than  it  was  when  he  wrote  his  essays  on  reli- 
gion. So  far  as  sin  is  concerned,  is  not  this 
version  heartily  acceptable  to  the  modern 
mind  ?  Is  it  not  sensible,  simple,  and  in 
spirit  strictly  normal,  as  well  as  moral  and 
religious  ?  Does  it  not  dispose,  once  for  all, 
both  of  the  religious  and  of  the  practical 
aspect  of  the  problem  of  sin  ? 

I  cannot  better  state  the  task  of  this  lecture 
than  by  taking  the  opportunity  which  Arnold's 
clearness  of  speech  gives  me  to  begin  the 
study  of  our  question  in  the  light  of  so  favorite 
a  modern  opinion. 

Ill 

It  would  not  be  useful  for  us  to  consider  any 
further,  in  this  place,  Paul's  own  actual 
doctrine  about  such  sin  as  an  individual  thinks 
to  have  been  due  to  his  own  voluntary  and 
personal  deed.  Paul's  view  regarding  the  na- 
ture of  original  sin  involves  other  questions 
than  the  one  which  is  at  present  before  us. 
We  speak  here  not  of  original  sin,  but  of  know- 
ing and  voluntary  evil  doing.  Paul's  idea  of 

224 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

salvation  from  original  sin  through  grace, 
and  through  loving  union  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Master,  is  inseparable  from  his  special 
opinions  regarding  the  Church  as  the  body  of 
Christ,  and  regarding  the  supernatural  exist- 
ence of  the  risen  Christ  as  the  Spirit  of  the 
Church.  These  matters  also  are  not  now 
before  us.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Paul's 
views  concerning  the  forgiveness  of  our  volun- 
tary sins.  For,  in  Paul's  mind,  the  whole 
doctrine  of  the  sins  which  the  individual  has 
knowingly  and  wilfully  committed,  is  further 
complicated  by  the  Apostle's  teachings  about 
predestination.  And  for  an  inquiry  into  those 
teachings  there  is,  in  this  lecture,  neither 
space  nor  motive.  Manifold  and  impressive 
though  Paul's  dealings  with  the  problem  of  sin 
are,  we  shall  therefore  do  well,  upon  this  oc- 
casion, to  approach  the  doctrine  of  the  volun- 
tary sins  of  the  individual  from  another  side 
than  the  one  which  Paul  most  emphasizes. 
Let  us  turn  to  aspects  of  the  Christian  tradi- 
tion about  wilful  sin  for  which  Paul  is  not 
mainly  responsible. 

Q  225 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

We  all  know,  in  any  case,  that  Arnold's 
own  views  about  the  sense  and  the  thought  of 
sin  are  not  the  views  which  have  been  preva- 
lent in  the  past  history  of  Christianity.  And 
Arnold's  hostility  to  the  Puritan  spirit  carries 
him  too  far  when  he  seems  to  attribute  to 
Puritanism  the  principal  responsibility  for 
having  made  the  fact  and  the  sense  of  sin  so 
prominent  as  it  has  been  in  Christian  thought. 
Long  before  Puritanism,  mediaeval  Christian- 
ity had  its  own  meditations  concerning  sin. 
Others  than  Puritans  have  brooded  too  much 
over  their  sins.  And  not  all  Puritans  have 
cultivated  the  thought  of  sin  with  a  morbid 
intensity. 

I  have  no  space  for  a  history  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  wilful  sin.  But,  by  way  of  prepara- 
tion for  my  principal  argument,  I  shall  next 
call  to  mind  a  few  of  the  more  familiar  Chris- 
tian beliefs  concerning  the  perils  and  the  results 
of  voluntary  sin,  without  caring,  at  the  mo- 
ment, whether  these  beliefs  are  mediaeval,  or 
Puritan,  or  not.  Thereafter,  I  shall  try  to 
translate  the  sense  of  these  traditional  beliefs 

226 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

into  terms  which  seem  to  me  to  be  worthy 
of  the  serious  consideration  of  the  modern 
man.  After  this  restatement  and  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Christian  doctrine,  —  not  of  orig- 
inal sin,  but  of  the  voluntary  sin  of  the  in- 
dividual, —  we  shall  have  new  means  of  seeing 
whether  Arnold  is  justified  in  declaring  that 
no  thought  about  sin  is  wise  except  such 
thought  as  is  indispensable  for  arousing  the 
effort  "  to  get  rid  of  sin." 

IV 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  concerning  wilful 
sin,  as  it  is  recorded  in  some  of  the  best  known 
of  his  sayings,  is  simple  and  searching,  august 
in  the  severity  of  the  tests  which  it  uses  for 
distinguishing  sinful  deeds  from  righteous 
deeds,  and  yet  radiant  with  its  familiar 
message  of  hope  for  the  sincerely  repentant 
sinner.  I  have  no  right  to  judge  as  to  the 
authenticity  of  the  individual  sayings  of  Jesus 
which  our  Gospels  record.  But  the  body  of 
the  teachings  of  the  Master  concerning  sin  is 
not  only  one  of  the  most  frequently  quoted 

227 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

portions  of  the  Gospel  tradition,  but  is  also 
an  essential  part  of  that  doctrine  of  Christian 
love  which  great  numbers  of  Christian  souls, 
both  learned  and  unlearned,  find  to  be  the 
most  obviously  characteristic  expression  of 
what  the  founder  had  at  heart  when  he  came 
to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost. 
Searching  is  this  teaching  about  sin,  because  of 
what  Matthew  Arnold  called  the  inwardness 
of  the  spirit  which  Jesus  everywhere  empha- 
sized in  telling  us  what  is  the  essence  of  right- 
eousness. August  is  this  teaching  in  the 
severity  of  the  tests  which  it  applies ;  because 
all  seeming,  all  worldly  repute,  all  outward 
conformity  to  rules,  avail  nothing  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Master,  unless  the  interior  life  of  the 
doer  of  good  works  is  such  as  fully  meets  the 
requirements  of  love,  both  towards  God  and 
towards  man. 

Countless  efforts  have  been  made  to  sum 
up  in  a  few  words  the  spirit  of  the  ethical 
teaching  of  Jesus.  I  make  no  new  effort,  I 
contribute  no  novel  word  or  insight,  when  I 
now  venture  to  say,  simply  in  passing,  that 

228 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

the  religion  of  the  founder,  as  preserved 
in  the  sayings,  is  a  religion  of  Whole-Hearted- 
ness.  The  voluntary  good  deed  is  one  which, 
whatever  its  outward  expression  may  be, 
carries  with  it  the  whole  heart  of  love,  both  to 
God  and  to  the  neighbor.  The  special  act  — 
whether  it  be  giving  the  cup  of  cold  water,  or 
whether  it  be  the  martyr's  heroism  in  confes- 
sing the  name  of  Jesus  in  presence  of  the 
persecutor  —  matters  less  than  the  inward 
spirit.  The  Master  gives  no  elaborate  code 
to  be  applied  to  each  new  situation.  The 
whole  heart  devoted  to  the  cause  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,  —  this  is  what  is  needed. 

On  the  other  hand,  whatever  wilful  deed 
does  not  spring  from  love  of  God  and  man, 
and  especially  whatever  deed  breaks  with  the 
instinctive  dictates  of  whole-hearted  love,  is 
sin.  And  sin  means  alienation  from  the  King- 
dom and  from  the  Father ;  and  hence,  in  the 
end,  means  destruction.  Here  again  the  au- 
gust severity  of  the  teaching  is  fully  mani- 
fested. But  from  this  destruction  there  is 
indeed  an  escape.  It  is  the  escape  by  the 

229 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

road  of  repentance.  That  is  the  only  road 
which  is  emphatically  and  repeatedly  insisted 
upon  in  the  sayings  of  Jesus,  as  we  have  them. 
But  this  repentance  must  include  a  whole- 
hearted willingness  to  forgive  those  who  tres- 
pass against  us.  Thus  repentance  means  a 
return  both  to  the  Father  and  to  the  whole- 
hearted life  of  love.  Another  name  for  this 
whole-heartedness,  in  action  as  well  as  in 
repentance,  is  faith.  For  the  true  lover  of 
God  instinctively  believes  the  word  of  the  Son 
of  Man  who  teaches  these  things,  and  is  sure 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  will  come. 

But  like  the  rest  of  the  reported  sayings  of 
Jesus,  this  simple  and  august  doctrine  of  the 
peril  of  sin,  and  of  the  way  of  escape  through 
repentance,  comes  to  us  with  many  indications 
that  some  further  and  fuller  revelation  of  its 
meaning  is  yet  to  follow.  Jesus  appears  in 
the  Gospel  reports  as  himself  formally  an- 
nouncing to  individuals  that  their  sins  are 
forgiven.  The  escape  from  sin  is  therefore 
not  always  wholly  due  to  the  repentant  sinner's 
own  initiative.  Assistance  is  needed.  And 

230 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

Jesus  appears  in  the  records,  as  assisting. 
He  assists,  not  only  as  the  teacher  who  an- 
nounces the  Kingdom,  but  as  the  one  who  has 
"power  to  forgive  sins."  Here  again  I  simply 
follow  the  well-known  records.  I  am  no 
judge  as  to  what  sayings  are  authentic. 

I  am  sure,  however,  that  it  was  but  an  in- 
evitable development  of  the  original  teaching 
of  the  founder  and  of  these  early  reports  about 
his  authority  to  forgive,  when  the  Christian 
community  later  conceived  that  salvation 
from  personal  and  voluntary  sin  had  become 
possible  through  the  work  which  the  departed 
Lord  had  done  while  on  earth.  How  Christ 
saved  from  sin  became  hereupon  a  problem. 
But  that  he  saved  from  sin,  and  that  he  some- 
how did  so  through  what  he  won  for  men  by 
his  death,  became  a  central  constituent  of  the 
later  Christian  tradition. 

A  corollary  of  this  central  teaching  was  a 
further  opinion  which  tradition  also  empha- 
sized, and,  for  centuries,  emphasized  the  more, 
the  further  the  apostolic  age  receded  into  the 
past.  This  further  opinion  was :  That  the 

231 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

wilful  sinner  is  powerless  to  return  to  a  whole- 
hearted union  with  God  through  any  deed  of 
his  own.  He  could  not  "get  rid  of  sin," 
either  by  means  of  repentance  or  otherwise, 
unless  the  work  of  Christ  had  prepared  the 
way.  This,  in  sum,  was  long  the  common 
tradition  of  the  Christian  world.  How  the 
saving  work  of  Christ  became  or  could  be 
made  efficacious  for  obtaining  the  forgiveness 
of  the  wilful  sin  of  an  individual,  —  this 
question,  as  we  well  know,  received  momen- 
tous and  conflicting  answers  as  the  Christian 
church  grew,  differentiated,  and  went  through 
its  various  experiences  of  heresy,  of  schism, 
and  of  the  learned  interpretation  of  its  faith. 
Here,  again,  the  details  of  the  history  of  dog- 
ma, and  the  practice  of  the  Church  and  of  its 
sects  in  dealing  with  the  forgiveness  of  sins, 
concern  us  not  at  all. 

We  need,  however,  to  remind  ourselves, 
at  this  point,  of  one  further  aspect  of  the 
tradition  about  wilful  sin.  That  sin,  if 
unforgiven,  leads  to  "death,"  was  a  thought 
which  Judaism  had  inherited  from  the  reli- 

232 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

gion  of  the  prophets  of  Israel.  It  was  a  grave 
thought,  essential  to  the  ethical  development 
of  the  faith  of  Israel,  and  capable  of  vast 
development  in  the  light  both  of  experience 
and  of  imagination. 

Because  of  the  later  growth  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  future  life,  the  word  "death"  came  to 
mean,  for  the  Christian  mind,  what  it  could  not 
yet  have  meant  for  the  early  prophets  of  Israel. 
And,  in  consequence,  Christian  tradition 
gradually  developed  a  teaching  that  the  di- 
vinely ordained  penalty  of  unforgiven  sin — the 
doom  of  the  wilful  sinner — is  a  "  second  death," 
an  essentially  endless  penalty.  The  Apoca- 
lypse imaginatively  pictures  this  doom. 
When  the  Church  came  to  define  its  faith  as 
to  the  future  life,  it  developed  a  well-known 
group  of  opinions  concerning  this  endless 
penalty  of  sin.  In  its  outlines  this  group  of 
opinions  is  familiar  even  to  all  children  who 
have  learned  anything  of  the  faith  of  the 
fathers. 

An  essentially  analogous  group  of  opinions 
is  found  in  various  religions  that  are  not 

233 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Christian.  In  its  origin  this  group  of  opin- 
ions goes  back  to  the  very  beginnings  of 
those  forms  of  ethical  religion  whose  history 
is  at  all  closely  parallel  to  the  history  of 
Judaism  or  of  Christianity.  The  motives 
which  are  here  in  question  lie  deeply  rooted  in 
human  nature ;  but  I  have  no  right  and  no 
time  to  attempt  to  analyze  them  now.  It  is 
enough  for  my  purpose  to  remind  you  that 
the  idea  of  the  endless  penalty  of  unforgiven 
sin  is  by  no  means  peculiar  to  Puritanism ; 
and  that  it  is  certainly  an  idea  which,  for  those 
who  accept  it  with  any  hearty  faith,  very 
easily  leads  to  many  thoughts  about  sin 
which  tend  to  exceed  the  strictly  artistic 
measure  which  Matthew  Arnold  assigns  as 
the  only  fitting  one  for  all  such  thoughts. 
To  think  of  a  supposed  "endless  penalty" 
as  a  certain  doom  for  all  unforgiven  sin,  may 
not  lead  to  morbid  brooding.  For  the  man 
who  begins  such  thoughts  may  be  sedately 
sure  that  he  is  no  sinner.  Or  again,  although 
he  confesses  himself  a  sinner,  he  may  be  pleas- 
antly convinced  that  forgiveness  is  readily 

234 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

and  surely  attainable,  at  least  for  himself. 
And,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  there  are  still  other 
reasons  why  no  morbid  thought  need  be  con- 
nected with  the  idea  of  endless  penalty.  But 
no  doubt  such  a  doctrine  of  endless  penalty 
tends  to  awaken  thoughts  which  have  a  less 
modern  seeming,  and  which  involve  a  less 
sure  confidence  in  one's  personal  power  to 
"get  rid  of  sin"  than  Matthew  Arnold's  words, 
as  we  have  cited  them,  convey.  If,  without 
any  attempt  to  dwell  further,  either  upon  the 
history  or  the  complications  of  the  traditional 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  wilful  sin  of  the 
individual,  we  reduce  that  doctrine  to  its 
simplest  terms,  it  consists  of  two  theses,  both 
of  which  have  had  a  vast  and  tragic  influence 
upon  the  fortunes  of  Christian  civilization. 
The  theses  are  these:  First:  "By  no  deed 
of  his  own,  unaided  by  the  supernatural 
consequences  of  the  work  of  Christ,  can 
the  wilful  sinner  win  forgiveness. "  Second  : 
"The  penalty  of  unforgiven  sin  is  the  endless 
second  death. ': 


235 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


The  contrast  between  these  two  traditional 
theses  and  the  modern  spirit  seems  manifest 
enough,  even  if  we  do  not  make  use  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  definition  of  the  reasonable 
attitude  towards  sin.  This  contrast  of  the  old 
faith  and  the  modern  view  is  one  of  the  most 
frequently  emphasized  means  of  challenging 
the  ethical  significance  of  the  Christian  tradi- 
tion. 

It  is  indeed  difficult  to  define  just  who  the 
"modern  man"  is,  and  what  views  he  has  to 
hold  in  order  to  be  modern.  But  very  many 
people,  I  suppose,  would  be  disposed  to  accept 
as  a  partial  definition  of  the  modern  man, 
this  formulation:  "The  modern  man  is  one 
who  does  not  believe  in  hell,  and  who  is  too 
busy  to  think  about  his  own  sins."  If  this 
definition  is  indeed  too  trivial  to  be  just,  it 
would  still  seem  to  many  serious  people  that, 
at  this  point,  if  at  no  other,  the  modern 
man  has  parted  company  with  Christian 
tradition. 

236 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

And  the  parting  would  appear  to  be  not 
accidental,  nor  yet  due  to  superficial  motives. 
The  deepest  ethical  interests  would  be  at 
stake,  if  the  appearances  here  represent  the 
facts  as  they  are.  For  the  old  faith  held  that 
the  very  essence  of  its  revelation  concerning 
righteousness  was  bound  up  with  its  concep- 
tion of  the  consequences  of  unforgiven  sin. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  education  of  the  hu- 
man race  has  taught  us  any  coherent  lesson, 
it  has  taught  us  to  respect  the  right  of  a  ra- 
tional being  to  be  judged  by  moral  standards 
that  he  himself  can  see  to  be  reasonable. 

Hence  the  moral  dignity  of  the  modern  idea 
of  man  seems  to  depend  upon  declining  to 
regard  as  just  and  righteous  any  penalty  which 
is  supposed  to  be  inflicted  by  the  merely  arbi- 
trary will  of  any  supernatural  power.  The  just 
penalty  of  sin,  to  the  modern  mind,  must 
therefore  be  the  penalty,  whatever  it  is, 
which  the  enlightened  sinner,  if  fully  awake 
to  the  nature  of  his  deed,  and  rational  in  his 
estimate  of  his  deed,  would  voluntarily  inflict 
upon  himself.  And  how  can  one  better  ex- 

237 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

press  that  penalty  than  by  following  the  spirit 
of  Matthew  Arnold's  advice:  "Get  rid  of 
your  sin"  ?  This  advice,  to  be  sure,  has  its 
own  deliberate  sternness.  For  "the  firm  ef- 
fort to  get  rid  of  sin"  may  involve  long  labor 
and  deep  grief.  But  "endless  penalty,"  a 
"second  death,"  — what  ethically  tolerable 
meaning  can  a  modern  mind  attach  to  these 
words  ? 

Is  not,  then,  the  chasm  between  the  modern 
ethical  view  and  the  ancient  faith  at  this 
point  simply  impassable  ?  Have  the  two  not 
parted  company  altogether,  both  in  letter  and, 
still  more,  in  their  inmost  spirit  ? 

To  this  question  some  representatives  of 
modern  liberal  Christianity  would  at  once 
reply  that,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  the 
early  Gospel  tradition  does  not  attribute  to 
Jesus  himself  the  more  hopeless  aspects  of  the 
doctrine  of  sin,  as  the  later  tradition  was  led 
to  define  them.  Jesus,  according  to  the  re- 
ports of  his  teaching  in  the  Gospels,  does  in- 
deed more  than  once  use  a  doctrine  of  the 
endless  penalty  of  unforgiven  sin,  —  a  doc- 

238 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

trine  with  which  a  portion  of  the  Judaism  of 
his  day  was  more  or  less  familiar.  In  well- 
known  parables  he  speaks  of  the  torments  of 
another  world.  And  in  general  he  deals  with 
wilful  sin  unsparingly.  But,  so  far  as  the 
present  life  is  concerned,  he  seems  to  leave 
the  door  of  repentance  always  open.  The 
Father  waits  for  the  Prodigal  Son's  return. 
And  the  Prodigal  Son  returns  of  his  own  will. 
We  hear  nothing  in  the  parables  about  his 
being  unable  effectively  to  repent  unless 
some  supernatural  plan  of  salvation  has  first 
been  worked  out  for  him.  Is  it  not  possible, 
then,  to  reconcile  the  Christian  spirit  and  the 
modern  man  by  simply  returning  to  the 
Christianity  of  the  parables  ?  So,  in  our 
day,  many  assert. 

I  do  not  believe  that  the  parables,  in  the 
form  in  which  we  possess  them,  present  to  us 
any  complete  view  of  the  essence  of  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  sin,  or  of  the  sinner's  way  of 
escape.  I  do  not  believe  that  they  were  in- 
tended by  the  Master  to  do  so.  I  have  al- 
ready pointed  out  how  our  reports  of  the 

239 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

founder's  teachings  about  sin  indicate  that 
these  teachings  were  intended  to  receive  a 
further  interpretation  and  supplement.  Our 
real  problem  is  whether  the  interpretation 
and  supplement  which  later  Christian  tradi- 
tion gave,  through  its  doctrine  of  sin,  and  of 
the  endless  penalty  of  sin,  was,  despite  its 
tragedy,  its  mythical  setting,  and  its  arbitra- 
riness, a  teaching  whose  ethical  spirit  we  can 
still  accept  or,  at  least,  understand.  Is  the 
later  teaching,  in  any  sense,  a  just  develop- 
ment of  the  underlying  meaning  of  the  par- 
ables ?  Does  any  deeper  idea  inform  the 
traditional  doctrine  that  the  wilful  sinner  is 
powerless  to  save  himself  from  a  just  and 
endless  penalty  through  any  repentance,  or 
through  any  new  deed  of  his  own  ? 

As  I  undertake  to  answer  these  questions, 
let  me  ask  you  to  bear  in  mind  one  general 
historical  consideration.  Christianity,  even 
in  its  most  imaginative  and  in  its  most  tragic 
teachings,  has  always  been  under  the  influ- 
ence of  very  profound  ethical  motives,  —  the 
motives  which  already  inspired  the  prophets 

240 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

of  Israel.  The  founder's  doctrine  of  the 
Kingdom,  as  we  now  possess  that  doctrine, 
was  an  outline  of  an  ethical  religion.  It  was 
also  a  prologue  to  a  religion  that  was  yet  to 
be  more  fully  revealed,  or  at  least  explained. 
This,  as  I  suppose,  was  the  founder's  personal 
intention.  When  the  early  Church  sought  to 
express  its  own  spirit,  it  was  never  knowingly 
false;  it  was  often  most  fluently,  yet  faithfully, 
true  to  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  founder. 
Its  expressions  were  borrowed  from  many 
sources.  Its  imagination  was  constructive  of 
many  novelties.  Only  its  deeper  spirit  was 
marvellously  steadfast.  Even  when,  in  its 
darker  moods,  its  imagination  dwelt  upon 
the  problem  of  sin,  it  saw  far  more  than  it 
was  able  to  express  in  acceptable  formulas. 
Its  imagery  was  often  of  local,  or  of  heathen, 
or  even  of  primitive  origin.  But  the  truth 
which  the  imagery  rendered  edifying  and 
teachable,  —  this  often  bears  and  invites  an 
interpretation  whose  message  is  neither  local 
nor  primitive.  Such  an  interpretation  I 
believe  to  be  possible  in  case  of  the  doc- 

B  241 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

trine  of  sin  and  of  its  penalty ;  and  to 
my  own  interpretation  I  must  now  ask  your 
attention. 

VI 

There  is  one  not  infrequent  thought  about 
sin  upon  which  Matthew  Arnold's  rule  would 
surely  permit  us  to  dwell ;  for  it  is  a  thought 
which  helps  us,  if  not  wholly  "to  get  rid  of 
sin,"  still,  in  advance  of  decisive  action,  to 
forestall  some  temptations  to  sin  which  we 
might  otherwise  find  too  insistent  for  our 
safety.  It  is  the  thought  which  many  a  man 
expresses  when  he  says,  of  some  imagined  act : 
"If  I  were  to  do  that,  I  should  be  false  to  all 
that  I  hold  most  dear ;  I  should  throw  away 
my  honor ;  I  should  violate  the  fidelity  that  is 
to  me  the  very  essence  of  my  moral  interest  in 
my  existence."  The  thought  thus  expressed 
may  be  sometimes  merely  conventional ;  but 
it  may  also  be  very  earnest  and  heartfelt. 

Every  man  who  has  a  moral  code  which  he 
accepts,  not  merely  as  the  customary  and, 
to  him,  opaque  or  senseless  verdict  of  his 

242 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

tribe  or  of  his  caste,  but  as  his  own  chosen 
personal  ideal  of  life,  has  his  power  to  formu- 
late what  for  him  would  seem  (to  borrow  the 
religious  phraseology)  his  "sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  -his  own  morally  "impos- 
sible" choice,  so  far  as  he  can  now  predeter- 
mine what  he  really  means  to  do. 

Different  men,  no  doubt,  have  different  ex- 
emplary sins  in  mind  when  they  use  such  words. 
Their  various  codes  may  be  expressions  of  quite 
different  and  largely  accidental  social  tradi- 
tions ;  their  diverse  examples  of  what,  for 
each  of  them,  would  be  his  own  instance  of 
the  unpardonable  sin,  may  be  the  outcome 
of  the  tabus  of  whatever  social  order  you 
please.  I  care  for  the  moment  not  at  all  for 
the  objective  ethical  correctness  of  any  one 
man's  definition  of  his  own  moral  code.  And 
I  am  certainly  here  formulating  no  ethical 
code  of  my  own.  I  am  simply  pointing  out 
that,  when  a  man  becomes  conscious  of  his 
own  rule  of  life,  of  his  own  ideal  of  what 
makes  his  voluntary  life  worth  while,  he  tends 
to  arrange  his  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  acts 

243 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

so  that,  for  him  at  least,  some  acts,  when  he 
contemplates  the  bare  possibility  of  doing 
them  himself,  appear  to  him  to  be  acts  such 
that  they  would  involve  for  him  a  kind 
of  moral  suicide,  —  a  deliberate  wrecking  of 
what  makes  life,  for  himself,  morally  worth 
while. 

One  common-sense  way  of  expressing  such 
an  individual  judgment  upon  these  extreme 
acts  of  wrong-doing,  is  to  say :  "If  I  were  to 
do  that  of  my  own  free  will,  I  could  thereafter 
never  forgive  myself." 

Since  I  am  here  not  undertaking  any 
critical  discussion  of  the  idea  of  the  "Ought," 
I  do  not  now  venture  the  thesis  that  every 
man  who  is  a  reasonable  being  at  all,  or  who, 
as  they  say,  "has  a  conscience,"  must  needs 
be  able  to  name  instances  of  acts  which,  if 
he  knowingly  chose  to  do  them,  would  make 
his  life,  in  his  own  eyes,  a  moral  chaos,  —  a 
failure,  —  so  that  he  would  "never  forgive" 
himself  for  those  acts.  If  a  student  of  ethics 
asks  me  to  prove  that  a  man  ought  to  view  his 
own  life  and  his  own  will  in  this  way,  I  am 

244 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

not  here  concerned  to  offer  such  a  proof  in 
philosophical   terms. 

But  this  I  can  point  out :  In  case  a  man 
thinks  of  his  own  possible  actions  in  this  way, 
he  need  not  be  morbidly  brooding  over  sins 
of  which  it  is  well  not  to  think  too  much. 
He  may  be  simply  surveying  his  plan  of  life 
in  a  resolute  way,  and  deciding,  as  well  as  he 
can,  where  he  stands ;  what  his  leading  ideas 
are,  and  what  makes  his  voluntary  life,  from 
his  own  point  of  view,  worth  living.  To  be 
resolute,  is  at  all  events  no  weakness ;  and  no- 
body "perishes"  merely  because  he  has  his 
mind  clearly  made  up  regarding  what,  for 
him,  would  be  his  own  unpardonable  sin. 
There  is  no  loss  for  one's  manhood  in  know- 
ing how  one's  "sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost," 
one's  possible  act  for  which  one  is  resolved 
never  to  ask  one's  own  forgiveness,  is  defined. 
Such  thoughts  tend  to  clear  our  moral  air,  if 
only  we  think  them  in  terms  of  our  own  per- 
sonal ideals,  and  do  not,  as  is  too  often  the 
case,  apply  them  solely  to  render  more  dra- 
matic our  judgments  about  our  neighbors. 

245 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

VII 

In  order  to  be  able  to  formulate  such 
thoughts,  one  must  have  an  "ideal,"  even  if 
one  cannot  state  it  in  an  abstract  form. 
One  must  think  of  one's  voluntary  life  in  terms 
of  fidelity  to  some  such  "ideal,"  or  set  of 
ideals.  One  must  regard  one's  self  as  a  crea- 
ture with  a  purpose  in  living.  One  must 
have  what  they  call  a  "mission"  in  one's 
own  world.  And  so,  whether  one  uses  philo- 
sophical theories  or  religious  beliefs,  or  does 
not  use  them,  one  must,  when  one  speaks 
thus,  actually  have  some  sort  of  spiritual 
realm  in  which,  as  one  believes,  one's  moral 
life  is  lived,  a  realm  to  whose  total  order,  as 
one  supposes,  one  could  be  false  if  one  chose. 
One's  mission,  one's  business,  must  ideally 
extend,  in  some  fashion,  to  the  very  boun- 
daries of  this  spiritual  realm,  so  that,  if  one 
actually  chose  to  commit  one's  supposed  un- 
pardonable sin,  one  could  exist  in  this  entire 
realm  only  as,  in  some  sense  and  degree,  an 
outcast,  —  estranged,  so  far  as  that  one  un- 

246 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

pardonable  fault  estranged  one,  from  one's 
own  chosen  moral  hearth  and  fireside.  At 
least  this  is  how  one  resolves,  in  advance  of 
decisive  action,  to  view  the  matter,  in  case 
one  has  the  precious  privilege  of  being  able 
to  make  such  resolves.  And  I  say  that  so  to 
find  one's  self  resolving,  is  to  find  not  weakness 
and  brooding,  but  resoluteness  and  clearness. 
Life  seems  simply  blurred  and  dim  if  one 
can  nowhere  find  in  it  such  sharp  moral  out- 
lines. And  if  one  becomes  conscious  of  such 
sharp  outlines,  one  is  not  saying:  "Behold 
me,  the  infallible  judge  of  moral  values  for 
all  mankind.  Behold  me  with  the  absolute 
moral  code  precisely  worked  out."  For  one 
is  so  far  making  no  laws  for  one's  neighbors. 
One  is  accepting  no  merely  traditional  tabus. 
One  is  simply  making  up  one's  mind  so  as  to 
give  a  more  coherent  sense  to  one's  choices. 
The  penalty  of  not  being  able  to  make  such 
resolves  regarding  what  would  be  one's  own 
unpardonable  sin,  is  simply  the  penalty  of 
flabbiness  and  irresoluteness.  To  remain  un- 
aware of  what  we  propose  to  do,  never  helps 

247 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

us  to  live.  To  be  aware  of  our  coherent  plan, 
to  have  a  moral  world  and  a  business  that,  in 
ideal,  extends  to  the  very  boundaries  of  this 
world,  and  to  view  one's  life,  or  any  part  of  it, 
as  an  expression  of  one's  own  personal  will, 
is  to  assert  one's  genuine  freedom,  and  is  not 
to  accept  any  external  bondage.  But  it  is 
also  to  bind  one's  self,  in  all  the  clearness  of 
a  calm  resolve.  It  is  to  view  certain  at  least 
abstractly  possible  deeds  as  moral  catas- 
trophes, as  creators  of  chaos,  as  deeds  whereby 
the  self,  if  it  chose  them,  would,  at  least  in 
so  far,  banish  itself  from  its  own  country. 

To  be  able  to  view  life  in  this  way,  to  resolve 
thus  deliberately  what  genuine  and  thorough- 
going sin  would  mean  for  one's  own  vision, 
requires  a  certain  maturity.  Not  all  ordinary 
misdeeds  are  in  question  when  one  thinks  of 
the  unpardonable  sin.  Blunders  of  all  sorts 
fill  one's  childhood  and  youth.  What  Paul 
conceived  as  our  original  sin  may  have 
expressed  itself  for  years  in  deeds  that  our 
social  order  condemns,  and  that  our  later 
life  deeply  deplores.  And  yet,  in  all  this 

248 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

maze  of  past  evil-doing  and  of  folly,  we  may 
have  been,  so  far,  either  helpless  victims  of 
our  nature  and  of  our  training,  or  blind  fol- 
lowers of  false  gods.  What  Paul  calls  sin 
may  have  "abounded."  And  yet,  as  we 
look  back,  we  may  now  judge  that  all  this 
was  merely  a  means  whereby,  henceforth, 
"grace  may  more  abound."  We  may  have 
learned  to  say,  —  it  may  be  wise,  and  even 
our  actual  duty  to  say:  "I  will  not  brood 
over  these  which  were  either  my  ignorant  or 
my  helpless  sins.  I  will  henceforth  firmly 
and  simply  resolve  'to  get  rid  of  them.' 
That  is  for  me  the  best.  Bygones  are  by- 
gones. Remorse  is  a  waste  of  time.  These 
*  confusions  of  a  wasted  youth '  must  be 
henceforth  simply  ignored.  That  is  the  way 
of  cheer.  It  is  also  the  way  of  true  right- 
eousness. I  can  live  wisely  only  in  case 
I  forget  my  former  follies,  except  in  so  far  as 
a  memory  of  these  follies  helps  me  not  to 
repeat  them." 

One  may  only  the  more  insist  upon  this 
cheering   doctrine   of  Lethe   and   forgiveness 

249 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

for  the  past,  and  of  "grace  abounding"  for 
the  future,  when  there  come  into  one's  life 
those  happenings  which  Paul  viewed  as  a 
new  birth,  and  as  a  "dying  to  sin."  These 
workings  of  "grace,"  if  they  occur  to  us,  may 
transform  our  "old  man"  of  inherited  defect, 
of  social  waywardness,  of  contentiousness, 
and  of  narrow  hatred  for  our  neighbors  and 
for  "the  law"  into  the  "new  life."  It  is  a 
new  life  to  us  because  we  now  seem  to  have 
found  our  own  cause,  and  have  learned  to  love 
our  sense  of  intimate  companionship  with  the 
universe.  Now,  for  the  first  time,  we  have 
found  a  life  that  seems  to  us  to  have  trans- 
parent sense,  unity  of  aim ,  and  an  abiding  and 
sustaining  inspiration  about  it. 

If  this  result  has  taken  place,  then,  whatever 
our  cause,  or  our  moral  opinions,  or  our  reli- 
gion may  be,  we  shall  tend  to  rejoice  with 
Paul  that  we  have  now  "died"  to  the  old  life 
of  ignorance  and  of  evil-working  distractions. 
Hereupon  we  may  be  ready  to  say,  with  him, 
and  joyously:  "There  is  no  condemnation" 
for  us  who  are  ready  to  walk  after  what  we 

250 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

now  take  to  be  "the  spirit."  The  past  is 
dead.  Grace  has  saved  us.  Forgiveness 
covers  the  evil  deeds  that  were  done.  For 
those  deeds,  as  we  now  see,  were  not  done  by 
our  awakened  selves.  They  were  not  our 
own  "free  acts"  at  all.  They  were  the  work- 
ings of  what  Paul  called  "the  flesh." 
"Grace"  has  blotted  them  out. 

I  am  still  speaking  not  of  any  one  faith 
about  the  grace  that  saves,  or  about  the  ideal 
of  life.  Let  a  man  find  his  salvation  as  it 
may  happen  to  him  to  find  it.  But  the  main 
point  that  I  have  further  to  insist  upon  is 
this  :  Whenever  and  however  we  have  become 
morally  mature  enough  to  get  life  all  colored 
through  and  through  by  what  seems  to  us  a 
genuinely  illuminating  moral  faith,  so  that 
it  seems  to  us  as  if,  in  every  deed,  we  could 
serve,  despite  our  weakness,  our  one  highest 
cause,  and  be  faithful  to  all  our  moral  world 
at  every  moment,  —  then  this  inspiration 
has  to  be  paid  for.  The  abundance  of 
grace  means,  henceforth,  a  new  gravity  of 
life. 

251 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  we  now  have  to  face  the  further  fact  that, 
if  we  have  thus  won  vast  ideals,  and  a  will 
that  is  now  inspired  to  serve  them,  we  can 
imagine  ourselves  becoming  false  to  this  our 
own  will,  to  this  which  gives  our  life  its  gen- 
uine value.  We  can  imagine  ourselves  break- 
ing faith  with  our  own  world-wide  cause  and 
inspiration.  One  who  has  found  his  cause, 
if  he  has  a  will  of  his  own,  can  become  a 
conscious  and  deliberate  traitor.  One  who 
has  found  his  loyalty  is  indeed,  at  first,  under 
the  obsession  of  the  new  spirit  of  grace.  But 
if,  henceforth,  he  lives  with  a  will  of  his  own, 
he  can,  by  a  wilful  closing  of  his  eyes  to  the 
light,  become  disloyal. 

Our  actual  voluntary  life  does  not  bear  out 
any  theory  as  to  the  fatally  predestined  per- 
severance of  the  saints.  For  our  voluntary 
life  seems  to  us  as  if  it  was  free  either  to  per- 
severe or  not  to  persevere.  The  more  precious 
the  light  that  has  seemed  to  come  to  me,  the 
deeper  is  the  disgrace  to  which,  in  my  own 
eyes,  I  can  condemn  myself,  if  I  voluntarily 
become  false  to  this  light. 

252 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

Now  it  is  indeed  not  well  to  brood  over 
such  chances  of  falsity.  But  it  is  manly 
to  face  the  fact  that  they  are  present. 

I  repeat  that,  in  all  this  statement,  I  have 
presupposed  no  philosophical  theory  of  free 
will,  and  have  not  assumed  the  truth  of  any 
one  ethical  code  or  doctrine.  I  have  been 
speaking  simply  in  terms  of  moral  experience, 
and  have  been  pointing  out  how  the  world 
seems  to  a  man  who  reaches  sufficient  moral 
maturity  to  possess,  even  if  but  for  a  season, 
a  pervasive  and  practically  coherent  ideal  of 
life,  and  to  value  himself  as  a  possible  servant 
of  his  cause,  but  a  servant  whose  freedom  to 
choose  is  still  his  own. 

What  I  point  out  is  that,  if  a  man  has  won 
practically  a  free  and  conscious  view  of  what 
his  honor  requires  of  him,  the  reverse  side  of 
this  view  is  also  present.  This  reverse  side 
takes  the  form  of  knowing  what,  for  this  man 
himself,  it  would  mean  to  be  wilfully  false  to 
his  honor.  One  who  knows  that  he  freely 
serves  his  cause  knows  that  he  could,  if  he 
chose,  become  a  traitor.  And  if  indeed  he 

253 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

freely  serves  his  cause,  he  knows  whether  or 
no  he  could  forgive  himself  if  he  wilfully  be- 
came a  traitor.  Whoever,  through  grace,  has 
found  the  beloved  of  his  life,  and  now  freely 
lives  the  life  of  love,  knows  that  he  could,  if 
he  chose,  betray  his  beloved.  And  he  knows 
what  estimate  his  own  free  choice  now  re- 
quires him  to  put  upon  such  betrayal. 

Choose  your  cause,  your  beloved,  and  your 
moral  ideal  as  you  please.  What  I  now  point 
out  is  that  so  to  choose  is  to  imply  your 
power  to  define  what,  for  you,  would  be  the 
unpardonable  sin  if  you  committed  it.  This 
unpardonable  sin  would  be  betrayal. 

VIII 

So  far  I  have  spoken  of  the  moral  possi- 
bility of  treason.  We  seem  to  be  free.  There- 
fore it  seems  to  us  as  if  treason  were  possible. 
But  now,  do  any  of  us  ever  actually  thus 
betray  our  own  chosen  cause  ?  Do  we  ever 
actually  turn  traitor  to  our  own  flag,  —  to  the 
flag  that  we  have  sworn  to  serve,  —  after 
taking  our  oath,  not  as  unto  men,  but  as  unto 

254 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

ourselves  and  our  cause  ?  Do  any  of  us  ever 
really  commit  that  which,  in  our  own  eyes,  is 
the  unpardonable  sin  ? 

Here,  again,  let  every  one  of  us  judge  for 
himself.  And  let  him  also  judge  rather  him- 
self than  his  neighbor.  For  we  are  here 
speaking,  not  of  customary  codes,  nor  of  out- 
ward seeming,  but  of  how  a  man  who  knows 
his  ideal  and  knows  his  own  will  finds  that 
his  inward  deed  appears  to  himself. 

Still,  apart  from  all  evil  speaking,  the  com- 
mon experience  of  mankind  seems  to  show  that 
such  actual  and  deliberate  sin  against  the 
light,  such  conscious  and  wilful  treason, 
occasionally  takes  place. 

So  far  as  we  know  of  such  treason  at  all, 
or  reasonably  believe  in  its  existence,  it 
appears  to  us  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  worst 
evil  with  which  man  afflicts  his  fellows  and 
his  social  order  in  this  distracted  world  of 
human  doings.  The  blindness  and  the  nai've 
cruelty  of  crude  passion,  the  strife  and  hatred 
with  which  the  natural  social  order  is  filled, 
often  seem  to  us  mild  when  we  compare 

255 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

them  with  the  spiritual  harm  that  follows 
the  intentional  betrayal  of  great  causes  once 
fully  accepted,  but  then  wilfully  forsaken,  by 
those  to  whom  they  have  been  intrusted. 

"If  the  light  that  is  in  thee  be  darkness, 
how  great  is  that  darkness."  This  is  the  word 
which  seems  especially  fitted  for  the  traitor's 
own  case.  For  he  has  seen  the  great  light.  The 
realm  of  the  spirit  has  been  graciously  opened 
to  him.  He  has  willingly  entered.  He  has 
chosen  to  serve.  And  then  he  has  closed  his 
eyes ;  and,  by  his  own  free  choice,  a  darkness 
far  worse  than  that  of  man's  primal  savagery 
has  come  upon  him.  And  the  social  world, 
the  unity  of  brotherhood,  the  beloved  life 
which  he  has  betrayed,  —  how  desolate  he 
has  left  what  was  fairest  in  it.  He  has  re- 
duced to  its  primal  chaos  the  fair  order  of 
those  who  trusted  and  who  lived  and  loved 
together  in  one  spirit ! 

But  we  are  here  little  concerned  with  what 
others  think  of  the  traitor,  if  such  traitor  there 
be.  We  are  interested  in  what  (if  the  light 
against  which  he  has  sinned  returns  to  him), 

256 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

the  traitor  henceforth  is  to  think  of  himself. 
Matthew  Arnold  would  say,  "Let  him  think 
of  his  sin/'  —  that  is,  in  this  case,  of  his  trea- 
son, —  only  in  so  far  as  is  indispensable  to 
the  "firm  resolve  to  get  rid  of  it."  We  ask 
whether,  —  now  that  the  traitor  has  first  won 
his  own  light,  and  has  defined  by  his  own  will 
his  own  unpardonable  sin,  and  has  then 
betrayed  his  cause,  has  sinned  against  his  light 
and  has  done  his  little  best  to  make  chaos  of 
his  own  chosen  ideal  and  of  his  moral  order, 
—  we  ask,  I  say,  whether  Arnold's  rule  seems 
any  longer  quite  adequate  to  meet  the  situa- 
tion. 

Of  course  I  am  not  venturing  to  assign 
to  the  supposed  traitor  any  penalties  except 
those  which  his  own  will  really  intends  to 
assign  to  him.  I  am  not  acting  in  the  least 
as  his  Providence.  I  am  leaving  him  quite 
free  to  decide  his  own  fate.  I  am  certainly 
not  counselling  him  to  feel  any  particular 
kind  or  degree  of  the  mere  emotion  called 
remorse.  For  all  that  I  now  shall  say,  he 
is  quite  free,  if  that  is  his  desire,  to  forget  his 

s  257 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

treason  once  for  all,  and  to  begin  his  business 
afresh  with  a  new  moral  ideal,  or  with  no 
ideal  at  all,  as  he  may  choose. 

What  I  ask,  however,  is  simply  this :  // 
he  resumes  his  former  position  of  knowing  and 
choosing  an  ideal,  if  he  also  remembers  what 
ideal  he  formerly  chose,  and  what  and  how 
and  how  deliberately  he  betrayed,  and  knows 
himself  for  what  he  is,  what  does  he  judge 
regarding  the  now  inevitable  and  endless  con- 
sequences of  his  deed  ?  And  what  answer 
will  he  now  make  to  Matthew  Arnold's  kind 
advice:-  "Get  rid  of  your  sin."  He  need 
not  answer  in  a  brooding  way.  He  need  be 
no  Puritan.  He  may  remain  as  cheerful  in 
his  passing  feelings  as  you  please.  He  may 
quite  calmly  rehearse  the  facts.  He  may 
decline  to  shed  any  tear,  either  of  repentance 
or  of  terror.  My  only  hypothesis  is  that  he 
sees  the  facts  as  they  are,  and  confesses,  how- 
ever coolly  and  dispassionately,  the  moral 
value  which,  as  a  matter  of  simple  coherence 
of  view  and  opinion,  he  now  assigns  to  himself. 


258 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

IX 

He  will  answer  Matthew  Arnold's  advice, 
as  I  think,  thus :  ' '  Get  rid  of  my  sin  ? ' 
How  can  I  get  rid  of  it  ?  It  is  done.  It  is 
past.  It  is  as  irrevocable  as  the  Archaean 
geological  period,  or  as  the  collision  of  stellar 
masses,  the  light  of  whose  result  we  saw 
here  on  earth  a  few  years  ago,  when  a  new 
star  flamed  forth  in  the  Constellation  Per- 
seus. I  am  the  one  who,  at  such  a  time,  with 
such  a  light  of  the  spirit  shining  before 
me,  with  my  eyes  thus  and  thus  open  to  my 
business  and  to  my  moral  universe,  first,  so 
far  as  I  could  freely  act  at  all,  freely  closed 
my  eyes,  and  then  committed  what  my  own 
will  had  already  defined  to  be  my  unpardon- 
able sin.  So  far  as  in  me  lay,  in  all  my 
weakness,  but  yet  with  all  the  wit  and  the 
strength  that  just  then  were  mine,  I  was  a 
traitor. 

That  fact,  that  event,  that  deed,  is  irrevo- 
cable. The  fact  that  I  am  the  one  who  then 
did  thus  and  so,  not  ignorantly,  but  know- 

259 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ingly,  —  that  fact  will  outlast  the  ages.    That 
fact  is  as  endless  as  time. 

And,  in  so  far  as  I  continue  to  value  myself 
as  a  being  whose  life  is  coherent  in  its  mean- 
ing, this  fact  that  then  and  there  I  was  a 
traitor  will  always  constitute  a  genuine  pen- 
alty, —  my  own  penalty,  —  a  penalty  that  no 
god  assigns  to  me,  but  that  I,  simply  because 
I  am  myself,  and  take  an  interest  in  knowing 
myself,  assign  to  myself,  precisely  in  so  far  as 
and  whenever  I  am  awake  to  the  meaning  of 
my  own  life.  I  can  never  undo  that  deed.  If 
I  ever  say, '  I  have  undone  that  deed,'  I  shall  be 
both  a  fool  and  a  liar.  Counsel  me,  if  you  will, 
to  forget  that  deed.  Counsel  me  to  do  good 
deeds  without  number  to  set  over  against 
that  treason.  Counsel  me  to  be  cheerful, 
and  to  despise  Puritanism.  Counsel  me  to 
plunge  into  Lethe.  All  such  counsel  may  be, 
in  its  way  and  time,  good.  Only  do  not 
counsel  me  'to  get  rid  of  just  that  sin. 
That,  so  far  as  the  real  facts  are  concerned, 
cannot  be  done.  For  I  am,  and  to  the  end 
of  endless  time  shall  remain,  the  doer  of  that 

260 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

wilfully  traitorous  deed.  Whatever  other 
value  I  may  get,  that  value  I  retain  forever. 
My  guilt  is  as  enduring  as  time." 

But  hereupon  a  bystander  will  naturally 
invite  our  supposed  traitor  to  repent,  and  to 
repent  thoroughly  of  his  treason.  The  trai- 
tor, now  cool  and  reasonable  once  more,  can 
only  apply  to  his  own  case  Fitzgerald's  word 
in  the  Omar  Khayyam  stanzas :  — 

The  moving  finger  writes,  and  having  writ, 
Moves  on  :  nor  all  your  piety  nor  wit 
Can  lure  it  back  to  cancel  half  a  line, 
Nor  all  your  tears  wash  out  a  word  of  it. 

These  very  familiar  lines  were  sometime 
viewed  as  Oriental  fatalism.  But  they  are, 
in  fact,  fully  applicable  to  the  freest  of  deeds 
when  once  that  deed  is  done. 

We  need  not  further  pursue  any  supposed 
colloquy  between  the  traitor  and  those  who 
comment  upon  the  situation.  The  simple 
fact  is  that  each  deed  is  ipso  facto  irrevocable ; 
that  our  hypothetical  traitor,  hi  his  own 
deed,  has  been  false  to  whatever  light  he  then 
and  there  had  and  to  whatever  ideal  he  then 

261 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

viewed  as  his  highest  good.  Hereupon  no 
new  deed,  however  good  or  however  faithful, 
and  however  much  of  worthy  consequences 
it  introduces  into  the  future  life  of  the  traitor 
or  of  his  world,  can  annul  the  fact  that  the 
one  traitorous  deed  was  actually  done.  No 
question  as  to  whether  the  traitor,  when  he 
first  chose  the  cause  which  he  later  betrayed, 
was  then  ethically  correct  in  his  choice,  aids 
us  to  estimate  just  the  one  matter  which  is 
here  in  question,  —  namely,  the  value  of  the 
traitor  as  the  doer  of  that  one  traitorous 
deed.  For  his  treason  consists  not  in  his 
blunders  in  the  choice  of  his  cause,  but  in  his 
sinning  against  such  light  as  he  then  and 
there  had.  The  question  is,  furthermore, 
not  one  as  to  his  general  moral  character, 
apart  from  this  one  act  of  treason.  To 
condemn  at  one  stroke  the  whole  man  for  the 
one  deed  is,  of  course,  absurd.  But  it  is  the 
one  deed  which  is  now  in  question.  This 
man  may  also  be  the  doer  of  countless  good 
deeds.  But  our  present  question  is  solely 
as  to  his  value  as  the  doer  of  that  one  trai- 

262 


TIME   AND    GUILT 

torous  deed.  This  value  he  has  through  his 
own  irrevocable  choice.  Whatever  other 
values  his  other  deeds  may  give  him,  this  one 
value  remains,  never  to  be  removed.  By  no 
deed  of  his  own  can  he  ever  escape  from  that 
penalty  which  consists  in  his  having  intro- 
duced into  the  moral  world  the  one  evil  which 
was,  at  the  time,  as  great  an  evil  as  he  could 
then,  of  his  own  will,  introduce. 

In  brief,  by  his  own  deed  of  treason,  the 
traitor  has  consigned  himself,  —  not  indeed 
his  whole  self,  but  his  self  as  the  doer  of  this 
deed,  —  to  what  one  may  call  the  hell  of  the 
irrevocable.  All  deeds  are  indeed  irrevocable. 
But  only  the  traitorous  sin  against  the  light 
is  such  that,  in  advance,  the  traitor's  own  free 
acceptance  of  a  cause  has  stamped  it  with  the 
character  of  being  what  his  own  will  had 
defined  as  his  own  unpardonable  sin.  What- 
ever else  the  traitor  may  hereafter  do,  — 
and  even  if  he  becomes  and  remains,  through 
all  his  future  life,  in  this  or  any  other  world, 
a  saint,  —  the  fact  will  remain :  There  was  a 
moment  when  he  freely  did  whatever  he  could 

263 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

to  wreck  the  cause  that  he  had  sworn  to  serve. 
The  traitor  can  henceforth  do  nothing  that 
will  give  to  himself,  precisely  in  so  far  as  he 
was  the  doer  of  that  one  deed,  any  character 
which  is  essentially  different  from  the  one 
determined  by  his  treason. 

The  hell  of  the  irrevocable:  all  of  us  know 
what  it  is  to  come  to  the  border  of  it  when 
we  contemplate  our  own  past  mistakes  or 
mischances.  But  we  can  enter  it  and  dwell 
in  it  only  when  the  fact  "This  deed  is  irrev- 
ocable," is  combined  with  the  further  fact 
"This  deed  is  one  that,  unless  I  call  treason 
my  good,  and  moral  suicide  my  life,  I  cannot 
forgive  myself  for  having  done." 

Now  to  use  these  expressions  is  not  to  con- 
demn the  traitor,  or  any  one  else,  to  endless 
emotional  horrors  of  remorse,  or  to  any  sen- 
suous pangs  of  penalty  or  grief,  or  to  any  one 
set  of  emotions  whatever.  It  is  simply  to 
say :  If  I  morally  value  myself  at  all,  it 
remains  for  me  a  genuine  and  irrevocable  evil 
in  my  world,  that  ever  I  was,  even  if  for  that 
one  moment  only  and  in  that  one  deed,  with 

264 


TIME   AND   GUILT 

all  my  mind  and  my  soul  and  my  heart 
and  my  strength,  a  traitor.  And  if  I  ever 
had  any  cause,  and  then  betrayed  it,  —  such 
an  evil  not  only  was  my  deed,  but  such  an 
evil  forever  remains,  so  far  as  that  one  deed 
was  done,  the  only  value  that  I  can  attribute 
to  myself  precisely  as  the  doer  of  that  deed 
at  that  time. 

What  the  pungency  of  the  odors,  what  the 
remorseful  griefs,  of  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable 
may  be,  for  a  given  individual,  we  need  not 
attempt  to  determine,  and  I  have  not  the 
least  right  or  desire  to  imagine.  Certainly 
remorse  is  a  poor  companion  for  an  active 
life ;  and  I  do  not  counsel  any  one,  traitor  or 
not  traitor,  to  cultivate  remorse.  Our  ques- 
tion is  not  one  about  one's  feelings,  but  about 
one's  genuine  value  as  a  moral  agent.  Cer- 
tainly  forgetfulness  is  often  useful  when  one 
looks  forward  to  new  deeds.  I  do  not  counsel 
any  one  uselessly  to  dwell  upon  the  past. 
Still  the  fact  remains,  that  the  more  I  come 
to  take  large  and  coherent  views  of  my  life 
and  of  its  meaning,  the  more  will  the  fact 

265 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

that,  by  my  own  traitorous  deed,  I  have  ban- 
ished myself  to  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable, 
appear  to  me  both  a  vast  and  a  grave  fact 
in  my  world.  I  shall  learn,  if  I  wisely  grow 
into  new  life,  neither  to  be  crushed  by  any 
sort  of  facing  of  that  fact,  nor  to  brood  unduly 
over  its  everlasting  presence  as  a  fact  in  my 
life.  But  so  long  as  I  remain  awake  to  the 
real  values  of  my  life,  and  to  the  coherence  of 
my  meaning,  I  shall  know  that  while  no  god 
shuts  me,  or  could  possibly  shut  me,  if  he 
would,  into  this  hell,  it  is  my  own  will  to  say 
that,  for  this  treason,  just  in  so  far  as  I  wil- 
fully and  knowingly  committed  this  treason, 
I  shall  permit  none  of  the  gods  to  forgive  me. 
For  it  is  my  precious  privilege  to  assert  my 
own  reasonable  will,  by  freely  accepting  my 
place  in  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable,  and  by 
never  forgiving  myself  for  this  sin  against  the 
light.  If  any  new  deed  can  assign  to  just 
that  one  traitorous  deed  of  mine  any  essen- 
tially novel  and  reconciling  meaning,  —  that 
new  deed  will  in  any  case  certainly  not  be  mine. 
I  can  do  good  deeds  in  future;  but  I  cannot 

266 


TIME    AND    GUILT 

revoke  my  individual  past  deed.  If  it  ever 
comes  to  appear  as  anything  but  what  I 
myself  then  and  there  made  it,  that  change  will 
be  due  to  no  deed  of  mine.  Nothing  that  I 
myself  can  do  will  ever  really  reconcile  me  to 
my  own  deed,  so  far  as  it  was  that  treason. 

This,  then,  as  I  suppose,  is  the  essential 
meaning  which  underlies  the  traditional 
doctrine  of  the  endless  penalty  of  wilful  sin. 
This  deeper  meaning  is  that,  quite  apart  from 
the  judgment  of  any  of  the  gods,  and  wholly 
in  accordance  with  the  true  rational  will  of 
the  one  who  has  done  the  deed  of  betrayal, 
the  guilt  of  a  free  act  of  betrayal  is  as  endur- 
ing as  time.  This  doctrine  so  interpreted  is, 
I  insist,  not  cheerless.  It  is  simply  resolute. 
It  is  the  word  of  one  who  is  ready  to  say  to 
himself,  "Such  was  my  deed,  and  I  did  it." 
No  repentance,  no  pardoning  power  can  de- 
prive us  of  the  duty  and,  —  as  I  repeat,  — 
the  precious  privilege  of  saying  that  of  our 
own  deed. 


267 


VI 

ATONEMENT 


LECTURE  VI 

ATONEMENT 

THE  human  aspect  of  the  Christian  idea 
of  atonement  is  based  upon  such  motives 
that,  if  there  were  no  Christianity  and  no 
Christians  in  the  world,  the  idea  of  atonement 
would  have  to  be  invented,  before  the  higher 
levels  of  our  moral  existence  could  be  fairly 
understood.  To  the  illustration  of  this  thesis 
the  present  lecture  is  to  be  largely  devoted. 
The  thesis  is  not  new ;  yet  it  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  insufficiently  emphasized  even  in 
recent  literature ;  although,  as  is  well  known, 
modern  expositors  of  the  meaning  of  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  atonement  have  laid  a  con- 
stantly increasing  stress  upon  the  illustra- 
tions and  analogies  of  that  doctrine  which 
they  have  found  present  in  the  common  experi- 
ence of  mankind,  in  non-theological  litera- 
ture, and  in  the  history  of  ethics. 


271 


THE   PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 


The  treatment  of  the  idea  of  atonement  in 
the  present  lecture,  if  it  in  any  respect  aids 
towards  an  understanding  of  our  problem, 
will  depend  for  whatever  it  accomplishes  upon 
two  deliberate  limitations. 

The  first  limitation  is  the  one  that  I  have 
just  indicated.  I  shall  emphasize,  more  than 
is  customary,  aspects  of  the  idea  of  atonement 
which  one  could  expound  just  as  readily  in  a 
world  where  the  higher  levels  of  moral  experi- 
ence had  somehow  been  reached  by  the 
leaders  of  mankind,  but  where  Christians 
and  Christianity  were  as  yet  wholly  unknown. 

My  second  limitation  will  be  this :  I  shall 
consider  the  idea  of  atonement  in  the  light 
of  the  special  problems  which  the  close 
of  the  lecture  on  "Time  and  Guilt"  left  upon 
our  hands.  The  result  will  be  a  view  of  the 
idea  of  atonement  which  will  be  intentionally 
fragmentary,  and  which  will  need  to  be  later 
reviewed  in  its  connection  with  the  other 
great  Christian  ideas. 

272 


ATONEMENT 

It  is  true  that  the  history  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  atonement  has  inseparably 
linked,  with  the  topics  that  I  shall  here  most 
emphasize,  various  religious  beliefs,  and  theo- 
logical interpretations,  with  which,  under 
my  chosen  limitations  and  despite  these  limi- 
tations, I  shall  endeavor  to  keep  in  touch. 
But,  in  a  great  part  of  what  I  shall  have  to 
say,  I  shall  confine  myself  to  what  I  may  call 
"the  problem  of  the  traitor,"  —  an  ethical 
problem  which,  on  the  basis  laid  in  the  fore- 
going lecture,  I  now  choose  arbitrarily  as 
my  typical  instance  of  the  human  need  for 
atonement,  and  of  a  sense  in  which,  in  purely 
human  terms,  we  are  able  to  define  what  an 
atoning  act  would  be,  if  it  took  place,  and 
what  it  could  accomplish,  as  well  as  what  it 
could  not  accomplish. 

Our  last  lecture  familiarized  us  with  the 
conception  of  the  being  whom  I  shall  now 
call,  throughout  this  discussion,  "the  traitor." 
We  shall  soon  learn  new  reasons  why  our 
present  study  will  gain,  in  definiteness  of  issue 
and  in  simplicity,  by  using  the  exemplary 
T  273 


THE   PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 

moral  situation  in  which  our  so-called  "trai- 
tor" has  placed  himself,  as  our  means  for 
bringing  to  light  what  relief,  what  possible, 
although  always  imperfect,  reconciliation  of 
the  traitor  with  his  own  moral  world,  and  with 
himself,  this  situation  permits. 

Perhaps  I  can  help  you  to  anticipate  my 
further  statement  of  my  reasons  for  dwelling 
upon  the  unlovely  situation  of  the  hypothet- 
ical traitor,  if  I  tell  you  what  association  of 
ideas  first  conducted  me  to  the  choice  of  the 
exemplary  type  of  moral  tragedy  which  I  shall 
use  as  the  vehicle  whereby  we  are  here  to  be 
carried  nearer  to  our  proposed  view  of  the 
idea  of  atonement. 

In  Bach's  Matthew  Passion  Music,  whose 
libretto  was  prepared  under  the  master's 
own  guidance,  there  is  a  great  passage  wherein, 
at  the  last  supper,  Christ  has  just  said : 
"One  of  you  shall  betray  me."  "And  they  all 
begin  to  say,"  so  the  recitative  first  tells  us, 
although  at  once  passing  the  words  over  into 
the  mouths  of  the  chorus,  "Is  it  I  ?  Is  it  I  ? 
Is  it  I  ?  "  And  then  there  begins  (with  the  use 

274 


ATONEMENT 

of  the  recurrent  chorale),  the  chorus  of  "the 
Believers"  :  "'Tis  I,  My  sins  betray  thee,  who 
died  to  make  me  whole."  The  effect  of  this,  as 
well  as  of  other  great  scenes  in  the  Passion 
Music,  —  the  dramatic  and  musical  workings 
in  their  unity,  as  Bach  devised  them,  transport 
the  listener  to  a  realm  where  he  no  longer  hears 
an  old  story  of  the  past  retold,  but,  looking 
down,  as  it  were,  upon  the  whole  stream  of 
time,  sees  the  betrayal,  the  divine  tragedy, 
and  the  triumph,  in  one,  —  not  indeed  time- 
less, but  time-embracing  vision.  In  this  vision 
all  flows  and  changes  and  passes  from  the 
sorrows  of  a  whole  world  to  the  hope  of  recon- 
ciliation. Yet  all  this  fluent  and  passionate 
life  is  one  divine  life,  and  is  also  the  listener's, 
or,  as  we  can  also  say,  the  spectator's  own 
life.  Judas,  the  spectator  knows  as  himself, 
as  his  own  ruined  personality;  the  sorrow  of 
Gethsemane,  the  elemental  and  perfectly 
human  passion  of  the  chorus  :  "  Destroy  them, 
destroy  them,  the  murderous  brood,"  —  the 
waiting  and  weeping  at  the  tomb,  —  these 
things  belong  to  the  present  life  of  the  be- 

275 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

liever  who  witnesses  the  passion.  They  are 
all  the  experiences  of  us  men,  just  as  we  are. 
They  are  also  divine  revelations,  coming  as  if 
from  a  world  that  is  somehow  inclusive  of  our 
despair,  and  that  yet  knows  a  joy  which,  as 
Bach  depicts  it  in  his  music  drama,  is  not  so 
much  mystical,  as  simply  classic  in  the  per- 
fection of  its  serene  self-control. 

What  the  art  of  Bach  suggests,  I  have 
neither  the  right  nor  the  power  to  translate 
into  "matter-moulded  forms  of  speech."  I 
have  here  to  tell  you  only  a  little  about  the 
being  whom  Mephistopheles  calls  "der  kleine 
Gott  der  Welt,"  about  the  one  who,  as  the 
demon  says:  — 

Bleibt  stets  von  gleichem  Schlag, 

Und  ist  so  wunderlich,  als  wie  am  ersten  Tag. 

And  I  am  forced  to  limit  myself  in  this  dis- 
course to  choosing,  —  as  my  exemplary  being 
who  feels  the  need  of  some  form  of  atonement, 
—  man  in  his  most  unlovely  and  drearily 
discouraging  aspect,  —  man  in  his  appearance 
as  a  betrayer.  The  justification  of  this 
repellent  choice  can  appear,  if  at  all,  then  only 

276 


ATONEMENT 

in  the  outcome  of  our  argument,  and  in  its 
later  relation  to  the  whole  Christian  doctrine 
of  life.  But  you  may  now  see  what  first 
suggested  my  using  this  choice  in  this  lecture. 

So  much,  however,  it  is  fair  to  add  as  I 
introduce  my  case.  The  "traitor"  of  my 
discourse  shall  here  be  the  creature  of  an 
ideal  definition  based  upon  facts  set  forth  in 
the  last  lecture.  I  shall  soon  have  to  speak 
again  of  the  sense  in  which  all  observers  of 
human  affairs  have  a  right  to  say  that  there 
are  traitors,  and  that  we  well  know  some  of 
their  works.  But  we  have  in  general  no  right 
to  say  with  assurance,  when  we  speak  of  our 
individual  neighbors,  that  we  know  who  the 
traitors  are.  For  we  are  no  searchers  of 
hearts.  And  treason,  as  I  here  define  it,  is 
an  affair  of  the  heart,  —  that  is,  of  the  inner 
voluntary  deed  and  decision. 

While  my  ideal  definition  of  the  traitor  of 
whom  we  are  now  to  speak  thus  depends,  as 
you  see,  upon  facts  already  discussed  in  our 
discourse  on  "Time  and  Guilt,"  our  new 
relation  to  the  being  defined  as  a  traitor  con- 

277 


THE   PROBLEM     OF  CHRISTIANITY 

sists  in  the  fact  that,  at  the  last  time,  we 
considered  the  nature  of  his  guilt,  while  now 
we  mean  to  approach  an  understanding  of  his 
relation  to  the  idea  of  atonement. 

II 

Two  conditions,  as  you  will  remember  from 
our  last  lecture,  determine  what  constitutes, 
for  the  purposes  of  my  definition,  a  traitor. 
The  first  condition  is  that  a  traitor  is  a  man 
who  has  had  an  ideal,  and  who  has  loved  it 
with  all  his  heart  and  his  soul  and  his  mind  and 
his  strength.  His  ideal  must  have  seemed 
to  him  to  furnish  the  cause  of  his  life.  It 
must  have  meant  to  him  what  Paul  meant 
by  the  grace  that  saves.  He  must  have 
embraced  it,  for  the  time,  with  full  loyalty. 
It  must  have  been  his  religion,  his  way  of 
salvation.  It  must  have  been  the  cause  of  a 
Beloved  Community. 

The  second  condition  that  my  ideal  traitor 
must  satisfy  is  this.  Having  thus  found  his 
cause,  he  must,  as  he  now  knows,  in  at  least 
some  one  voluntary  act  of  his  life,  have  been. 

278 


ATONEMENT 

deliberately  false  to  his  cause.  So  far  as  in 
him  lay,  he  must,  at  least  in  that  one  act, 
have  betrayed  his  cause. 

Such  is  our  ideal  traitor.  At  the  close  of  the 
last  lecture  we  left  him  condemned,  in  his 
own  sight,  to  what  we  called  the  "hell  of  the 
irrevocable." 

We  now,  for  the  moment,  still  confine  our- 
selves to  his  case,  and  ask :  Can  the  idea 
of  atonement  mean  anything  that  permits  its 
application,  in  any  sense,  however  limited, 
to  the  situation  of  this  traitor  ?  Can  there 
be  any  reconciliation,  however  imperfect, 
between  this  traitor  and  his  own  moral  world, 
—  any  reconciliation  which,  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  and  for  his  own  consciousness, 
can  make  his  situation  in  his  moral  world 
essentially  different  from  the  situation  in 
which  his  own  deed  has  so  far  left  him  ? 

In  the  hell  of  the  irrevocable  there  may  be, 
as  at  the  last  time  we  pointed  out,  no  sensuous 
penalties  to  fear.  And  there  may  be,  for 
all  that  we  know,  countless  future  opportu- 
nities for  the  traitor  to  do  good  and  loyal 

279 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

deeds.  Our  problem  lies  in  the  fact  that 
none  of  these  deeds  will  ever  undo  the  sup- 
posed deed  of  treason.  In  that  sense,  then, 
no  good  deeds  of  the  traitor's  future  will 
ever  so  atone  for  his  one  act  of  treason,  that 
he  will  become  clear  of  just  that  treason,  and 
of  what  he  finds  to  be  its  guilt.  He  had  his 
moral  universe;  and  his  one  act  of  treason 
did  the  most  that  he  then  and  there  could  do 
to  destroy  that  world  and  to  wreck  his  own 
relation  to  its  meaning.  His  irrevocable  deed 
is,  for  his  moral  consciousness,  its  own  end- 
less penalty.  For  that  deed  he  can  never 
forgive  himself,  so  long  as  he  knows  himself. 
And  nothing  that  we  can  now  say  will  change 
just  these  aspects  of  the  matter.  So  much  in 
the  traitor's  situation  is  irrevocably  fixed. 

But  it  is  still  open  to  us  to  ask  whether 
anything  could  occur  in  the  traitor's  moral 
world  which,  without  undoing  his  deed,  could 
still  add  some  new  aspect  to  this  deed,  —  an 
aspect  such  that,  when  the  traitor  came  to 
view  his  own  deed  in  this  light,  he  could  say : 
"  Something  in  the  nature  of  a  genuinely  recon- 

280 


ATONEMENT 

ciling  element  has  been  added,  not  only  to 
my  world  and  to  my  own  life,  but  also  to  the 
inmost  meaning  even  of  my  deed  of  treason 
itself.  My  moral  situation  has  hereby  been 
rendered  genuinely  better  than  my  deed 
left  it.  And  this  bettering  does  not  consist 
merely  in  the  fact  that  some  new  deed  of  my 
own,  or  of  some  one  else,  has  been  simply  a 
good  deed,  instead  of  a  bad  one,  and  has  thus 
put  a  good  thing  into  my  world  to  be  hence- 
forth considered  side  by  side  with  the  irrev- 
ocable evil  deed.  No,  this  bettering  consists 
in  something  more  than  this,  —  in  something 
which  gives  to  my  very  treason  itself  a  new 
value ;  so  that  I  can  say,  not :  'It  is  undone  ;* 
but  'I  am  henceforth  in  some  measure,  in 
some  genuine  fashion,  morally  reconciled  to 
the  fact  that  I  did  this  evil. ' ' 

Plainly,  if  any  such  reconciliation  is  pos- 
sible, it  will  be  at  best  but  an  imperfect  and 
tragic  reconciliation.  It  cannot  be  simply 
and  perfectly  destructive  of  guilt.  But  the 
great  tragic  poets  have  long  since  taught  us 
that  there  are  indeed  tragic  reconciliations 

281 


THE   PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 

even  when  there  are  great  woes.  These 
tragic  reconciliations  may  be  infinitely 
pathetic;  but  they  may  be  also  infinitely 
elevating,  and  even,  in  some  unearthly  and 
wondrous  way,  triumphant. 

Our  question  is :  Can  such  a  tragic  recon- 
ciliation occur  in  the  case  of  the  traitor  ? 
If  it  can  occur,  the  result  would  furnish  to  us 
an  instance  of  an  atonement.  This  atone- 
ment would  not  mean,  and  could  not  mean, 
a  clearing  away  of  the  traitor's  guilt  as  if  it 
never  had  been  guilt.  It  would  still  remain 
true  that  the  traitor  could  never  rationally 
forgive  himself  for  his  deed.  But  he  might  in 
some  measure,  and  in  some  genuine  sense, 
become,  not  simply,  but  tragically,  —  sternly, 
-  yet  really,  reconciled,  not  only  to  himself, 
but  to  his  deed  of  treason,  and  to  its  meaning 
in  his  moral  world. 

Let  us  consider,  then,  in  what  way,  and  to 
what  degree,  the  traitor  might  find  such  an 
atonement. 


282 


ATONEMENT 

III 

The  Christian  idea  of  atonement  has  al- 
ways involved  an  affirmative  answer  to  the 
question :  Is  an  atonement  for  even  a  wilful 
deed  of  betrayal  possible  ?  Is  a  reconcilia- 
tion of  even  the  traitor  to  himself  and  to  his 
world  a  possibility  ?  The  help  that  our 
argument  gets  from  employing  the  supposed 
traitor's  view  of  his  own  case  as  the  guide  of 
our  search  for  whatever  reconciliation  is 
still  possible  for  him,  shows  itself,  at  the 
present  point  of  our  inquiry,  by  simplifying 
the  issue,  and  by  thus  enabling  us  at  once  to 
dispose,  very  briefly  —  not  indeed  of  the 
Christian  idea  of  atonement  (for  that,  as  we 
shall  see,  will  later  reveal  itself  in  a  new  and 
compelling  form),  but  of  a  great  number  of 
well-known  theological  theories  of  the  nature 
of  atonement,  so  far  as  they  are  to  help  our 
traitor  to  get  a  view  of  his  own  case. 

These  theological  theories  stand  at  a  pecul- 
iar disadvantage  when  they  speak  to  the  now 
fully  awakened  traitor,  when  he  asks  what 

283 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

measure  of  reconciliation  is  still  for  him 
possible.  Our  traitor  has  his  own  narrow,  but 
for  that  very  reason,  clearly  outlined  problem 
of  atonement  to  consider.  We  here  confine 
ourselves  to  his  view. 

Calmly  reasonable  in  his  hell  of  the  irrevo- 
cable, he  is  dealing,  not  with  the  "angry 
God"  of  a  well-known  theological  tradition, 
but  with  himself.  He  asks,  not  indeed  for 
escape  from  the  irrevocable,  but  for  what 
relative  and  imperfect  tragic  reconciliation 
with  his  world  and  with  his  past,  his  moral 
order  can  still  furnish  to  him,  by  any  new 
event  or  deed  or  report.  Shall  we  offer 
him  one  of  the  traditional  theological  com- 
forts and  say:  "Some  one,  —  namely,  a 
divine  being,  —  Christ  himself,  has  accom- 
plished a  full  'penal  satisfaction'  for  your 
deed  of  treason.  Accept  that  satisfying  sac- 
rifice of  Christ,  and  you  shall  be  reconciled." 

The  traitor  need  not  pause  to  repeat  any  of 
the  now  so  well-known  theological  and  ethical 
objections  to  the  "penal  satisfaction"  theories 
of  atonement.  He  needs  no  long  dispute  to 

284 


ATONEMENT 

clear  his  head.  The  cold  wintry  light  of  his 
own  insight  into  what  was  formerly  his  moral 
home  and  into  what  he  has  by  his  own  deed 
lost,  is  enough  to  show  him  the  mercilessly 
unchangeable  outlines  of  his  moral  landscape. 
He  sees  them;  and  that  is  so  far  enough. 
"Penal  satisfaction?"  "That"  he  will  say, 
"may  somehow  interest  the  'angry  God'  of 
one  or  another  theologian.  If  so,  let  this 
angry  God  be  content,  if  he  chooses.  That 
does  not  reconcile  me.  So  far  as  penalty  is 
concerned :  — 

*  I  was  my  own  destroyer  and  will  be  my  own  hereafter.' 
I  asked  for  reconciliation  with  my  own  moral 
universe,  not  for  the  accidental  pacification 
of  some  angry  God.  The  'penal  satisfac- 
tion' offered  by  another  is  simply  foreign  to 
all  the  interests  in  the  name  of  which  I 
inquire." 

But  hereupon  let  a  grander,  —  let  a  far 
more  genuinely  religious  and  indeed  truly 
Christian  chord  be  sounded  for  the  traitor's 
consolation.  Let  the  words  of  Paul  be  heard: 
"There  is  now  no  condemnation  for  them  that 

285 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

are  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  walk  not  after  the 
flesh,  but  after  the  spirit."  The  simply 
human  meaning  of  those  immortal  words,  if 
understood  quite  apart  from  Paul's  own 
religious  beliefs,  is  far  deeper  than  is  any 
merely  technical  theological  theory  of  atone- 
ment. And  our  traitor  will  well  know  what 
those  words  of  Paul  mean.  Their  deepest 
human  meaning  has  long  since  entered  into 
his  life.  Had  it  not  so  entered,  he  would 
be  no  traitor ;  for  he  would  never  have  known 
that  there  is  what,  for  his  own  estimate,  has 
been  a  Holy  Spirit,  —  a  cause  to  which  to 
devote  one's  life,  —  a  love  that  is  indeed 
redeeming,  and,  when  it  first  comes  to  us, 
compelling, -- the  love  that  raises,  as  if 
from  the  dead,  the  man  who  becomes  the 
lover,  —  the  love  that  also  forces  the  lover, 
with  its  mysterious  power,  to  die  to  his  old 
natural  life  of  barren  contentions,  and  of 
distractions,  and  to  live  in  the  spirit.  That 
love,  —  so  the  traitor  well  knows,  redeems 
the  lover  from  all  the  helpless  natural  wretch- 
edness of  the,  as  yet,  unawakened  life.  It 

286 


ATONEMENT 

frees  from  "condemnation"  all  who  remain 
true  to  this  love. 

The  traitor  knows  all  this  by  experience. 
And  he  knows  it  not  in  terms  of  mere  theo- 
logical formulas.  He  knows  it  as  a  genuinely 
human  experience.  He  knows  it  as  what 
every  man  knows  to  whom  a  transforming 
love  has  revealed  the  sense  of  a  new  life. 

All  this  is  familiar  to  the  traitor.  In  his 
own  way,  he  has  heard  the  voice  of  the  Spirit. 
He  has  been  converted  to  newness  of  life. 
And  therefore  he  has  known  what  his  own  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost  meant.  And,  there- 
after, he  has  deliberately  committed  that 
very  sin.  Therefore  Paul's  words  are  at 
once,  to  his  mind,  true  in  their  most  human  as 
well  as  in  their  most  spiritual  sense.  And 
just  for  that  very  reason  they  are  to  him 
now,  in  his  guilt,  as  comfortless  and  as 
unreconciling  as  a  death  knell.  For  they 
tell  him  of  precisely  that  life  which  once  was 
his,  and  which,  so  far  as  his  one  traitorous 
deed  could  lead  to  such  a  result,  he  himself 
has  deliberately  slain. 

287 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

If  there  is  to  be  any,  even  the  most  tragic, 
reconciliation  for  the  traitor,  there  must  be 
other  words  to  be  heard  besides  just  these 
words  of  Paul. 

IV 

Yet  there  are  expositors  of  the  Christian 
idea  of  the  atonement  who  have  developed 
the  various  so-called  "moral  theories"  of 
the  atoning  work  of  Christ.  And  these  men 
indeed  have  still  many  things  to  tell  our 
traitor.  One  of  the  most  clearly  written  and, 
from  a  purely  literary  point  of  view,  one  of 
the  most  charming  of  recent  books  on  the 
moral  theory  of  the  idea  of  atonement, 
namely,  the  little  book  with  which  Sabatier 
ended  his  life  work,  very  effectively  contrasts 
with  all  the  "penal  satisfaction"  theories  of 
atonement,  the  doctrine  that  the  work  of 
Christ  consisted  in  such  a  loving  sacrifice  for 
human  sin  and  for  human  sinners  that  the 
contemplation  of  this  work  arouses  in  the 
sinful  mind  a  depth  of  saving  repentance,  as 
well  as  of  love,  —  a  depth  of  glowing  fervor, 
such  as  simply  purifies  the  sinner's  soul. 

288 


ATONEMENT 

For  love  and  repentance  and  new  life,  —  these 
constitute  reconciliation.  These,  for  Saba- 
tier,  and  for  many  other  representatives  of 
the  "moral  theories"  of  atonement,  —  these 
are  in  themselves  salvation. 

I  need  not  dwell  upon  such  opinions  in  this 
connection.  They  are  nowadays  well  known 
to  all  who  have  read  any  notable  portion  of 
the  recent  literature  of  the  atonement.  They 
are  present  in  this  recent  literature  in  almost 
endless  variations.  In  general  these  views 
are  deep,  and  Christian,  and  cheering,  and 
unquestionably  moral.  And  their  authors 
can  and  do  freely  use  Paul's  words ;  and  on 
occasion  supplement  Paul's  words  by  a  cita- 
tion of  the  parables.  In  the  parables  there 
is  no  definite  doctrine  of  atonement  enun- 
ciated. But  there  is  a  doctrine  of  salvation 
through  loving  repentance.  Cannot  our 
traitor,  in  view  of  the  loving  sacrifice  that 
constitutes,  according  to  tradition,  Christ's 
atoning  work,  repent  and  love  ?  Does  that 
not  reconcile  him  ?  May  not  the  love  of 
Christ  both  constrain  and  console  him  ? 

u  289 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


Once  more,  speaking  still  from  his  own 
purely  human  point  of  view,  our  traitor 
sadly  simplifies  the  labor  of  considering  in 
detail  these  various  moral  theories  of  atone- 
ment. The  traitor  seeks  the  possible,  the 
relative,  the  inevitably  imperfect  reconcilia- 
tion which,  for  one  in  his  case,  is  still  rationally 
definable.  He  discounts  all  that  you  can  say 
as  to  the  transforming  pathos  and  the  com- 
pelling power  of  love,  and  of  the  sacrifices. 
All  this  he  long  since  knows.  And,  as  I  must 
repeat,  all  this  constitutes  the  very  essence  of 
his  own  tragedy.  He  knew  love  before  he 
became  a  traitor.  He  knew  the  love  that  has 
inspired  heroes,  martyrs,  prophets,  and  saviours 
of  mankind.  All  this  he  knew.  And  in  his 
one  traitorous  deed  he  thrust  it  forth.  That 
is  the  very  heart  of  his  problem.  Repent- 
ance ?  Yes,  —  so  far  as  he  now  has  insight, 
—  he  has  repentance  for  his  traitorous  deed. 
He  has  this  repentance,  if  not  as  in  the  form 
of  passionate  remorse,  still  in  the  form  of  an 

290 


ATONEMENT 

irrevocable  condemnation  of  his  own  deed. 
He  has  this  repentance  as  the  very  breath  of 
what  is  now  his  moral  existence  in  the  hell  of 
the  irrevocable. 

As  for  amendment  of  life,  and  good  deeds 
yet  to  come,  he  well  knows  the  meaning 
of  all  these  things.  He  is  ready  to  do  what- 
ever he  can.  But  none  of  all  this  doing 
of  good  works,  none  of  this  repentance,  no 
love,  and  no  tears  will  "lure  back"  the 
"moving  finger"  to  "cancel  half  a  line,"  or 
wash  out  a  word  of  what  is  written.  Once, 
when  the  great  light  first  came,  and  the  one 
who  is  now  the  traitor  saw  what  life  meant, 
his  repentance  —  as  he  then  indeed  repented 
—  reconciled  him  with  his  own  life,  and  did 
so  for  precisely  the  reasons  which  Paul  has 
explained.  But  that  was  his  repentance  for 
the  former  deeds  of  his  folly,  for  the  misad- 
ventures and  the  passions  of  his  helpless  natu- 
ral sinfulness.  He  then  repented,  namely,  of 
what  he  had  done  before  the  light  came. 

But  now  his  state  is  quite  other.  We  know 
why  it  is  other.  And  we  know,  too,  why  the 

291 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

parables  no  longer  can  comfort  the  traitor. 
Their  words  can  at  most  only  remind  him 
of  what  he  himself  best  knows. 

"Thou  knewest,"  says  the  returning  Lord 
to  the  traitor-servant  in  the  parable  of  the 
talents;  "thou  knewest  that  I  was  a  hard 
master."  And  as  for  our  traitor,  —  so  far 
as  his  one  deed  of  treason  could  express  his 
will,  —  it  was  the  deed  of  one  who  not  merely 
hid  his  talent  in  a  napkin,  but  betrayed  his 
Lord  as  Judas  betrayed.  Therefore  if  atone- 
ment is  to  mean  for  the  traitor  anything  that 
shall  be  in  any  sense  reconciling,  he  must  hear 
of  it  in  some  new  form.  He  is  no  mere 
prodigal  son.  His  problem  is  that  of  the  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Let  us  leave,  then,  both  the  "penal  satis- 
faction" theories  and  the  "moral  theories" 
to  address  themselves  to  other  men.  Our 
traitor  knows  too  well  the  sad  lesson  of  his 
own  deed  to  be  aided  either  by  the  vain  tech- 
nicalities of  the  more  antiquated  of  these  theo- 
logical types  of  theories,  or  by  the  true,  but 
to  him  no  longer  applicable,  comforts  which 

292 


ATONEMENT 

the  theories  of  the  other  —  the  moral   type 
—  open  to  his  view. 

Plainly,  then,  the  traitor  himself  can  sug- 
gest nothing  further  as  to  his  own  reconcilia- 
tion with  the  world  where,  by  his  deed  of 
betrayal,  he  once  chose  to  permit  the  light 
that  was  in  him  to  become  darkness.  We 
must  turn  in  another  direction. 

VI 

We  have  so  far  considered  the  traitor's 
case  as  if  his  treason  had  been  merely  an 
affair  of  his  own  inner  life,  —  a  sort  of  secret 
impious  wish.  But  of  course,  while  we  are 
indeed  supposing  the  traitor,  —  now  enlight- 
ened by  the  view  of  his  own  deed,  —  to  be 
the  judge  of  what  he  himself  has  meant  and 
done,  —  we  well  know  that  his  false  deed  was, 
in  his  own  opinion,  no  mere  thought  of  un- 
holiness.  He  had  a  cause.  That  is,  he 
lived  in  a  real  world.  And  he  was  false  to 
his  cause.  He  betrayed.  Now  betrayal  is 
something  objective.  It  breaks  ties.  It  rends 
asunder  what  love  has  joined  in  dear  unity. 

293 


THE   PROBLEM    OF  CHRISTIANITY 

What  human  ties  the  traitor  broke,  we  leave 
to  him  to  discover  for  himself.  Why  they 
were  to  his  mind  holy,  we  also  need  not  now 
inquire.  Enough,  —  since  he  was  indeed 
loyal,  —  he  had  found  his  ties ;  —  they  were 
precious  and  human  and  real ;  and  he  believed 
them  holy ;  —  and  he  broke  them.  That  is, 
so  far  as  in  him  lay,  he  destroyed  by  his 
deed  the  community  in  whose  brotherhood, 
in  whose  life,  in  whose  spirit,  he  had  found 
his  guide  and  his  ideal.  His  deed,  then,  con- 
cerns not  himself  only,  but  that  community 
whereof  he  was  a  voluntary  member.  The 
community  knows,  or  in  the  long  run  must 
learn,  that  the  deed  of  treason  has  been  done, 
even  if,  being  itself  no  searcher  of  hearts,  it 
cannot  identify  the  individual  traitor.  We 
often  know  not  who  the  traitors  are.  But  if 
ours  is  the  community  that  is  wrecked,  we 
may  well  know  by  experience  that  there  has 
been  treason. 

The  problem  of  reconciliation,  then, — 
if  reconciliation  there  is  to  be,  —  concerns 
not  only  the  traitor,  but  the  wounded  or 

294 


ATONEMENT 

shattered  community.  Endlessly  varied  are 
the  problems  —  the  tragedies,  the  lost  causes, 
the  heartbreaks,  the  chaos,  which  the  deeds 
of  traitors  produce.  All  this  we  merely  hint 
in  passing.  But  all  this  constitutes  the  heart 
of  the  sorrow  of  the  higher  regions  of  our 
human  world.  And  we  here  refer  such  count- 
less, commonplace,  but  crushing  tragedies  to 
these  ruins  which  are  the  daily  harvest-home 
of  treason,  merely  in  order  to  ask  the  ques- 
tion :  Can  a  genuinely  spiritual  community, 
whose  ideals  are  such  as  Paul  loved  to  portray 
when  he  wrote  to  his  churches,  —  can  such 
a  loving  and  beloved  community  in  any  degree 
reconcile  itself  to  the  existence  of  traitors 
in  its  world,  and  to  the  deeds  of  individual 
traitors  ?  Can  it  in  any  wise  find  in  its  world 
something  else,  over  and  above  the  treason, 
—  something  which  atones  for  the  spiritual 
disasters  that  the  very  being  of  treason  both 
constitutes  and  entails  ?  Must  not  the  exist- 
ence of  traitors  remain,  for  the  offended 
community,  an  evil  that  is  as  intolerable  and 
irrevocable  and  as  much  beyond  its  powers  of 

295 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

reconciliation  as  is,  for  the  traitor  himself, 
his  own  past  deed,  seen  in  all  the  light  of  its 
treachery  ?  Can  any  soul  of  good  arise  or 
be  created  out  of  this  evil  thing,  or  as  an  atone- 
ment therefor  ? 

You  see,  I  hope,  that  I  am  in  no  wise  asking 
whether  the  community  which  the  traitor  has 
assailed,  desires,  or  does  well  either  to  inflict 
or  to  remit  any  penalties  said  to  be  due  to 
the  traitor  for  his  deed.  I  am  here  speaking 
wholly  of  the  possibility  of  inner  and  human 
reconciliations.  The  only  penalty  which,  in 
the  hell  of  the  irrevocable,  the  traitor  himself 
inevitably  finds,  is  the  fact:  "I  did  it." 
The  one  irrevocable  fact  with  which  the  com- 
munity can  henceforth  seek  to  be  reconciled, 
if  reconciliation  is  possible,  is  the  fact :  "This 
evil  was  done."  That  is,  "These  invaluable 
ties  were  broken."  This  unity  of  brotherhood 
was  shattered.  The  life  of  the  community,  — 
as  it  was  before  the  blow  of  treason  fell,  — 
can  never  be  restored  to  its  former  purity  of 
unscarred  love.  This  is  the  fact.  For  this 
let  the  community  now  seek,  —  not  oblivion, 

296 


ATONEMENT 

for  that  is  a  mere  losing  of  the  truth ;  not 
annulment,  for  that  is  impossible;  but  some 
measure  of  reconciliation. 

For  the  community,  as  I  am  now  viewing 
its  ideal  but  still  distinctly  human  life,  the 
question  is  not  one  of  what  we  usually  call 
* '  forgiveness . "  If  "  forgiveness ' '  means  simply 
an  affectionate  remission  of  penalty,  that  is 
something  which,  for  a  given  community, 
may  be  not  only  humanly  possible,  but  ob- 
viously both  wise  and  desirable.  Penalty  is 
no  remedy  for  the  irrevocable.  Forgiveness 
is  often  both  reasonable  and  convenient.  Nor 
need  the  question  be  raised  as  to  whether 
the  community  could  ever  trust  the  traitor 
with  the  old  hearty  human,  although  always 
fallible,  confidence.  What  the  community 
can  know  is  —  not  the  traitor's  heart,  but 
the  fact  —  manifest  through  the  shattered 
ties  and  the  broken  spiritual  life,  —  the  fact 
that  a  deed  of  treason  has  been  done.  That 
the  deed  was  the  voluntary  work  of  just 
this  traitor,  the  community  can  learn  only  as 
a  matter  of  probable  opinion,  or  perhaps 

297 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

through  the  traitor's  confession.  But,  just 
as  the  community  cannot  now  search  the 
traitor's  heart,  or  know  whether  he  will 
hereafter  repeat  his  treason  in  some  new  form, 

-  just  so,  too,  it  never  has  been  able,  before 
the  deed  of  treason  was  committed,  to  search 
the  hearts  of  any  of  its  free  and  loyal  members, 
and  to  know  whether,  in  fact,  its  trust  was 
wholly   well    founded    when    it    believed,   or 
hoped,  that  just  this  treason  would  never  be 
committed  by  any  one  of  the  members  whom 
it  fondly  trusted. 

All  the  highest  forms  of  the  unity  of  the 
spirit,  in  our  human  world,  constantly  depend, 
for  their  very  existence,  upon  the  renewed 
free  choices,  the  sustained  loyalty,  of  the 
members  of  communities.  Hence  the  very 
best  that  we  know,  namely,  the  loyal  brother- 
hood of  the  faithful  who  choose  to  keep  their 
faith,  —  this  best  of  all  human  goods,  I  say, 

-  is  simply  inseparable  from  countless  possi- 
bilities of  the  worst  of  human  tragedies,  —  the 
tragedy  of  broken  faith.     At  such  cost  must 
the  loftiest  of  our  human  possessions  in  the 

298 


ATONEMENT 

realm  of  the  spirit  be  purchased,  —  at  the 
cost,  namely,  of  knowing  that  some  deed  of 
wilful  treason  on  the  part  of  some  one  whom 
we  trusted  as  brother  or  as  beloved  may  rob 
us  of  this  possession.  And  the  fact  that  we 
are  thus  helplessly  dependent  on  human 
fidelity  for  some  of  our  highest  goods,  and 
so  may  be  betrayed,  —  this  fact  is  due  not  to 
the  natural  perversity  of  men,  nor  to  the  mere 
weakness  of  those  who  love  and  trust.  This 
fact  is  due  to  something  which,  without  any 
metaphysical  theory,  we  ordinarily  call  man's 
freedom  of  choice.  We  do  not  want  our 
beloved  community  to  consist  of  puppets,  or 
of  merely  fascinated  victims  of  a  mechanically 
insistent  love.  We  want  the  free  loyalty  of 
those  who,  whatever  fascination  first  won  them 
to  their  cause,  remain  faithful  because  they 
choose  to  remain  faithful.  Of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  good  faith.  The  beloved  community 
demands  for  itself  such  freely  and  deliberately 
steadfast  members.  And  for  that  very  reason, 
in  a  world  where  there  is  such  free  and  good 
faith,  —  there  can  be  treason.  Hence  the 

299 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

realm  where  the  spirit  reaches  the  highest 
human  levels  is  the  region  where  the  worst 
calamities  can,  and  in  the  long  run  do,  assail 
many  who  depend  upon  the  good  faith  of 
their  brethren. 

The  community,  therefore,  never  had  any 
grounds,  before  the  treason,  for  an  absolute 
assurance  about  the  future  traitor's  perse- 
verance in  the  faith.  After  his  treason,  if 
indeed  he  repents  and  now  begins  once  more 
to  act  loyally,  —  it  may  acquire  a  relative 
assurance  that  he  will  henceforth  abide  faith- 
ful. The  worst  evil  is  not,  then,  that  a  trust 
in  the  traitor,  which  once  was  rightly  serene 
and  perfectly  confident,  is  now  irrevocably 
lost.  It  is  not  this  which  constitutes  the 
irreconcilable  aspect  of  the  traitor's  deed. 
All  men  are  frail.  And  especially  must  those 
who  are  freely  loyal  possess  a  certain  freedom 
to  become  faithless  if  they  choose.  This 
evil  is  a  condition  of  the  highest  good  that 
the  human  world  contains.  And  so  much  the 
community,  in  presence  of  the  traitor,  ought 
to  recognize  as  something  that  was  always 

300 


ATONEMENT 

possible.  It  also  ought  to  know  that  a  cer- 
tain always  fallible  trust  in  the  traitor  can 
indeed  be  restored  by  his  future  good  deeds, 
if  such  are  done  by  him  with  every  sign  that 
he  intends  henceforth  to  be  faithful. 

But  what  is  indeed  irrevocably  lost  to  the 
community  through  the  traitor's  deed  is 
precisely  what  I  just  called  "unscarred  love." 
The  traitor  remains  —  for  the  community  as 
well  as  for  himself  —  the  traitor,  —  just  so 
far  as  his  deed  is  confessed,  and  just  so  far 
as  his  once  unsullied  fidelity  has  been  stained. 
This  indeed  is  irrevocable.  It  is  perfectly 
human.  But  it  is  unutterably  comfortless  to 
the  shattered  community. 

It  is  useless,  then,  to  say  that  the  problem 
of  reconciliation,  so  far  as  the  community  is 
concerned,  is  the  problem  of  "  forgiveness," 
not  now  as  remission  of  penalty,  but  of  for- 
giveness, in  so  far  as  forgiveness  means  a 
restoring  of  the  love  of  the  community,  or 
of  its  members,  towards  the  one  who  has 
now  sinned,  but  repented.  Love  may  be 
restored.  If  the  traitor's  future  attitude 

301 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

makes  that  possible,  human  love  ought  to 
be  restored  to  the  now  both  repentant  and 
well-serving  doer  of  the  past  evil  deed.  But 
alas  !  this  restored  love  will  be  the  love  for 
the  member  who  has  been  a  traitor ;  and  the 
tragedy  of  the  treason  will  permanently  form 
part  in  and  of  this  love.  Thus,  then,  up  to 
this  point,  there  appears  for  the  community 
as  well  as  for  the  traitor,  no  ground  for 
even  the  imperfect  reconciliation  of  which 
we  have  been  in  search.  Is  there,  then,  any 
other  way,  still  untried,  in  which  the  com- 
munity may  hope,  if  not  to  find,  then  to 
create  something  which,  in  its  own  strictly 
limited  fashion,  will  reconcile  the  community 
to  the  traitor  and  to  the  irrevocable,  and 
irrevocably  evil,  deed. 

VII 

Such  a  way  exists.  The  community  can- 
not undo  the  traitor's  deed,  and  cannot  simply 
annul  the  now  irrevocable  fact  of  the  evil 
which  has  been  accomplished.  Penalty,  even 
if  called  for,  annuls  nothing  of  all  that  has 

302 


ATONEMENT 

been  done.  Repentance  does  not  turn  back- 
wards the  flow  of  time.  Restored  and  always 
fallible  human  confidence  in  the  traitor's 
good  intentions  regarding  his  future  deeds, 
is  not  true  reconciliation.  Forgiveness  does 
not  wash  out  a  word  of  the  record  that  the 
moving  finger  of  treason  has  written.  The 
love  of  the  forgiving  community,  or  of  its 
members,  for  the  repentant  and  now  well- 
doing traitor,  is  indeed  a  great  good  ;  but  it  is 
a  love  that  has  forever  lost  one  of  its  most 
cherished  possessions,  —  the  possession  of  a 
loyal  member  who,  in  the  old  times  before 
the  treason,  not  only  loved,  but,  so  far,  had 
steadfastly  kept  his  faith.  By  all  these  means, 
then,  no  atonement  is  rendered  to  the  com- 
munity. Neither  hatred  nor  penalty  need 
be,  from  the  side  of  the  community,  in  any 
wise  in  question.  But  the  fact  remains : 
The  community  has  lost  its  treasure;  its 
once  faithful  member  who,  until  his  deed  of 
treason  came,  had  been  wholly  its  own 
member.  And  it  has  lost  the  ties  and  the 
union  which  he  destroyed  by  his  deed,  And, 

303 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

for  all  this  loss,  it  lovingly  mourns  with  a 
sorrow  for  which,  thus  far,  we  see  no  recon- 
ciliation. Who  shall  give  to  it  its  own  again  ? 
The  community,  then,  can  indeed  find 
no  reconciliation.  But  can  it  create  one  ? 
At  the  worst,  it  is  the  traitor,  and  it  is  not 
the  community,  that  has  done  this  deed. 
New  deeds  remain  to  be  done.  The  com- 
munity is  free  to  do  them,  or  to  be  incarnate 
in  some  faithful  servant  who  will  do  them. 
Could  any  possible  new  deed,  done  by,  or  on 
behalf  of,  the  community,  and  done  by  some 
one  who  is  not  stained  by  the  traitor's  deed, 
introduce  into  this  human  world  an  element 
which,  as  far  as  it  went,  would  be,  in  whatever 
measure,  genuinely  reconciling  ? 

VIII 

We  stand  at  the  very  heart  and  centre  of 
the  human  problem  of  atonement.  We  have 
just  now  nothing  to  do  with  theological  opin- 
ion on  this  topic.  I  insist  that  our  problem 
is  as  familiar  and  empirical  as  is  death  or 
grief.  That  problem  of  atonement  daily  arises 

304 


ATONEMENT 

not  as  between  God  and  man  (for  we  here  are 
simply  ignoring,  for  the  time  being,  the  meta- 
physical issues  that  lie  behind  our  problem). 
That  problem  is  daily  faced  by  all  those  faith- 
ful lovers  of  wounded  and  shattered  com- 
munities who,  going  down  into  the  depths  of 
human  sorrow,  either  as  sufferers  or  as  friends 
who  would  fain  console,  or  who,  standing 
by  hearths  whose  fires  burn  no  more,  or 
loving  their  country  through  all  the  sorrows 
which  traitors  have  inflicted  upon  her,  or 
who,  not  weakly,  but  bravely  grieving  over  the 
woe  of  the  whole  human  world,  are  still 
steadily  determined  that  no  principality  and 
no  power,  that  no  height  and  no  depth, 
shall  be  able  to  separate  man  from  his  true 
love,  which  is  the  triumph  of  the  spirit. 
That  human  problem  of  atonement  is,  I  say 
daily  faced,  and  faced  by  the  noblest  of 
mankind.  And  for  these  our  noblest,  despite 
all  our  human  weakness,  that  problem  is, 
in  principle  and  in  ideal,  daily  solved.  Let  us 
turn  to  such  leaders  of  the  human  search 
after  greatness,  as  our  spiritual  guides, 
x  305 


THE   PROBLEM     OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Great  calamities  are,  for  all  but  the  traitor 
himself,  —  so  far  as  we  have  yet  considered 
his  case,  —  great  opportunities.  Lost  causes 
have  furnished,  times  without  number,  the 
foundations  and  the  motives  of  humanity's 
most  triumphant  loyalty. 

When  treason  has  done  its  last  and  most 
cruel  work,  and  lies  with  what  it  has  de- 
stroyed, —  dead  in  the  tomb  of  the  irrevocable 
past,  —  there  is  now  the  opportunity  for  a 
triumph  of  which  I  can  only  speak  weakly 
and  in  imperfectly  abstract  formulas.  But, 
as  I  can  at  once  say,  this  of  which  I  now  speak 
is  a  human  triumph.  It  forms  part  of  the 
history  of  man's  earthly  warfare  with  his 
worst  foes.  Moreover,  whenever  it  occurs 
at  all,  this  is  a  triumph,  not  merely  of  stoical 
endurance,  nor  yet  of  kindly  forgiveness,  nor 
of  the  mystical  mood  which,  seeing  all  things 
in  God,  feels  them  all  to  be  good.  It  is  a 
triumph  of  the  creative  will.  And  what 
form  does  it  take  amongst  the  best  of  men, 
who  are  here  to  be  our  guides  ? 

I  answer,  this  triumph  over  treason  can 
306 


ATONEMENT 

only  be  accomplished  by  the  community,  or 
on  behalf  of  the  community,  through  some 
steadfastly  loyal  servant  who  acts,  so  to  speak, 
as  the  incarnation  of  the  very  spirit  of  the 
community  itself.  This  faithful  and  suffering 
servant  of  the  community  may  answer  and 
confound  treason  by  a  work  whose  type  I 
shall  next  venture  to  describe,  in  my  own 
way,  thus :  First,  this  creative  work  shall 
include  a  deed,  or  various  deeds,  for  which 
only  just  this  treason  furnishes  the  oppor- 
tunity. Not  treason  in  general,  but  just  this 
individual  treason  shall  give  the  occasion, 
and  supply  the  condition  of  the  creative  deed 
which  I  am  in  ideal  describing.  Without 
just  that  treason,  this  new  deed  (so  I  am 
supposing)  could  not  have  been  done  at  all. 
And  hereupon  the  new  deed,  as  I  suppose,  is 
so  ingeniously  devised,  so  concretely  practical 
in  the  good  which  it  accomplishes,  that,  when 
you  look  down  upon  the  human  world  after 
the  new  creative  deed  has  been  done  in  it, 
you  say,  first,  "This  deed  was  made  possible 
by  that  treason ;  and,  secondly,  The  world, 

307 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

as  transformed  by  this  creative  deed,  is  better 
than  it  would  have  been  had  all  else  remained 
the  same,  but  had  that  deed  of  treason  not  been 
done  at  all.9'  That  is,  the  new  creative  deed 
has  made  the  new  world  better  than  it  was 
before  the  blow  of  treason  fell. 

Now  such  a  deed  of  the  creative  love  and 
of  the  devoted  ingenuity  of  the  suffering 
servant,  on  behalf  of  his  community,  breaks 
open,  as  it  were,  the  tomb  of  the  dead  and 
treacherous  past,  and  comes  forth  as  the  life 
and  the  expression  of  the  creative  and  recon- 
ciling will.  It  is  this  creative  will  whose 
ingenuity  and  whose  skill  have  executed  the 
deed  that  makes  the  human  world  better 
than  it  was  before  the  treason. 

To  devise  and  to  carry  out  some  new  deed 
which  makes  the  human  world  better  than  it 
would  have  been  had  just  that  treasonable 
deed  not  been  done;  —  is  that  not,  in  its 
own  limited  way  and  sense,  a  reconciling  form, 
both  of  invention  and  of  conduct  ?  Let  us 
forget,  for  the  moment,  the  traitor.  Let  us 
now  think  only  of  the  community.  We  know 

308 


ATONEMENT 

why  and  in  what  sense  it  cannot  be  recon- 
ciled to  the  traitor  or  to  his  deed.  But  have 
we  not  found,  without  any  inconsistency,  a 
new  fact  which  furnishes  a  genuinely  recon- 
ciling element  ?  It  indeed  furnishes  no  per- 
fect reconciliation  with  the  irrevocable ;  but 
it  transforms  the  meaning  of  that  very  past 
which  it  cannot  undo.  It  cannot  restore  the 
unscarred  love.  It  does  supply  a  new  triumph 
of  the  spirit,  —  a  triumph  which  is  not  so 
much  a  mere  compensation  for  what  has  been 
lost,  as  a  transfiguration  of  the  very  loss  into 
a  gain  that,  without  this  very  loss,  could 
never  have  been  won.  The  traitor  cannot 
thus  transform  the  meaning  of  his  own  past. 
But  the  suffering  servant  can  thus  transfigure 
this  meaning;  can  bring  out  of  the  realm  of 
death  a  new  life  that  only  this  very  death 
rendered  possible. 

The  triumph  of  the  spirit  of  the  community 
over  the  treason  which  was  its  enemy,  the 
rewinning  of  the  value  of  the  traitor's  own 
life,  when  the  new  deed  is  done,  involves  the 
old  tragedy,  but  takes  up  that  tragedy  into 

309 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

a  life  that  is  now  more  a  life  of  triumph  than 
it  would  have  been  if  the  deed  of  treason  had 
never  been  done. 

Therefore,  if  indeed  you  suppose  or  observe 
that,  in  our  human  world,  such  creative  deeds 
occur,  you  see  that  they  indeed  do  not  remove, 
they  do  not  annul,  either  treason  or  its 
tragedy.  But  they  do  show  us  a  genuinely 
reconciling,  a  genuinely  atoning,  fact  in  the 
world  and  in  the  community  of  the  traitor. 
Those  who  do  such  deeds  solve,  I  have  just 
said,  not  the  impossible  problem  of  undoing 
the  past,  but  the  genuine  problem  of  finding, 
even  in  the  worst  of  tragedies,  the  means  of 
an  otherwise  impossible  triumph.  They  meet 
the  deepest  and  bitterest  of  estrangements 
by  showing  a  way  of  reconciliation,  and  a 
way  that  only  this  very  estrangement  has 
made  possible.1 

1  The  view  with  regard  to  Atonement  stated  in  the  text  was 
reached  by  me  quite  independently  of  any  knowledge  on  my  part 
of  the  remarkable  book  of  Mr.  Charles  Allen  Dinsmore :  "  Atonement 
in  Literature  and  Life"  (Boston,  1906).  I  am  glad  to  find  myself  in 
close  agreement  with  some  of  the  essential  features  of  Mr.  Dinsmore's 
position.  He  has  especially  called  my  attention  to  Milton's  illustra- 
tion of  this  view  of  Adam's  case. 

310 


ATONEMENT 


IX 


This  is  the  human  aspect  of  the  idea  of 
atonement.  Do  we  need  to  solve  our  theo- 
logical problems  before  we  decide  whether 
such  an  idea  has  meaning,  and  is  ethically 
defensible  ?  I  must  insist  that  this  idea 
comes  to  us,  not  from  the  scholastic  quiet  of 
theological  speculation,  but  stained  with  the 
blood  of  the  battle-fields  of  real  life.  For 
myself,  I  can  say  that  no  theological  theory 
suggested  to  me  this  interpretation  of  the 
essential  nature  of  an  atoning  deed.  I  can- 
not call  the  interpretation  new,  simply  because 
I  myself  have  learned  it  from  observing  the 
meaning  of  the  lives  of  some  suffering  ser- 
vants, —  plain  human  beings,  —  who  never 
cared  for  theology,  but  who  incarnated  in 
their  own  fashion  enough  of  the  spirit  of  their 
community  to  conceive  and  to  accomplish 
such  new  and  creative  deeds  as  I  have  just 
attempted  to  characterize.  To  try  to  de- 
scribe to  you,  at  all  adequately,  the  life  or 

311 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  work  of  any  such  persons,  I  have  neither 
the  right  nor  the  power.  Here  is  no  place 
for  such  a  collection  and  analysis  of  the  human 
form  of  the  atoning  life  as  only  a  William 
James  could  have  justly  accomplished.  And 
upon  personal  histories  I  could  dwell,  in  this 
place,  only  at  the  risk  of  intruding  upon  lives 
which  I  have  been  privileged  sometimes  to 
see  afar  off,  and  briefly,  but  which  I  have  no 
right  to  report  as  mere  illustrations  of  a 
philosophical  argument.  ^It  is  enough,  I  think, 
for  me  barely  to  indicate  what  I  have  in  mind 
when  I  say  that  such  things  are  done  amongst 
men. 

All  of  us  well  know  of  great  public  bene- 
factors whose  lives  and  good  works  have  been 
rendered  possible  through  the  fact  that  some 
great  personal  sorrow,  some  crushing  blow  of 
private  grief  first  descended,  and  seemed  to 
wreck  their  lives.  Such  heroic  souls  have 
then  been  able,  in  these  well-known  types  of 
cases,  not  only  to  bear  their  own  grief,  and 
to  rise  from  the  depths  of  it  (as  we  all  in  our 
time  have  to  attempt  to  do).  They  have  been 

312 


ATONEMENT 

able  also  to  use  their  grief  as  the  very  source 
of  the  new  arts  and  inventions  and  labors 
whereby  they  have  become  such  valuable 
servants  of  their  communities.  Such  people 
indeed  often  remind  us  of  the  suffering  servant 
in  Isaiah ;  for  their  life  work  shows  that  they 
are  willing  to  be  wounded  for  the  sake  of 
their  community.  Indirectly,  too,  they  often 
seem  to  be  suffering  because  of  the  faults  as 
well  as  because  of  the  griefs  of  their  neighbors, 
or  of  mankind.  And  it  indeed  often  occurs 
to  us  to  speak  of  these  public  or  private 
benefactors  as  living  some  sort  of  atoning 
life,  as  bearing,  in  a  sense,  not  only  the  sor- 
rows, but  the  sins  of  other  men. 

Yet  it  is  not  of  such  lives,  noble  as  they 
are,  that  I  am  now  thinking  —  nor  of  such 
vicarious  suffering,  of  such  sympathizing 
helpfulness  in  human  woe,  of  such  rising 
from  private  grief  to  public  service,  —  that 
I  am  now  speaking,  when  I  say  that  atoning 
deeds,  in  the  more  precise  sense  just  described, 
are  indeed  done  in  our  human  world.  Sharply 
contrasted  with  these  beneficent  lives  and 

313 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

deeds,  which  I  have  just  mentioned,  are  the 
other  lives  of  which  I  am  thinking,  and  to 
which,  in  speaking  of  atonement,  I  have  been 
referring.  These  are  the  lives  of  which  I 
have  so  little  right  to  give  more  than  a  bare 
hint  in  this  place. 

One's  private  grief  may  be  the  result  of  the 
deed  of  a  traitor.  That  again  is  something 
which  often  seems  to  happen  in  our  human 
world.  One  may  rally  from  the  despair  due 
to  even  such  a  blow,  and  may  later  become  a 
public  benefactor.  We  all  know,  I  suppose, 
people  who  have  done  that,  and  whose  lives 
are  the  nobler  and  more  serviceable  because 
they  have  conquered  such  a  grief,  and  have 
learned  great  lessons  through  such  a  conquest. 
Yet  even  such  lives  do  not  show  exactly  the 
reconciling  and  atoning  power  that  I  now  most 
have  in  mind.  Let  me  next  state  a  mere 
supposition. 

Suppose  a  community,  —  a  modern  com- 
munity, —  to  be  engaged  with  the  ideals 
and  methods  of  modern  reform,  in  its  contests 
with  some  of  those  ills  which  the  natural 

314 


ATONEMENT 

viciousness,  the  evil  training,  and  the  treason- 
able choices  of  very  many  people  combine  to 
make  peculiarly  atrocious  in  the  eyes  of  all 
who  love  mankind.  Such  evils  need  to  be  met, 
in  the  good  warfare,  not  only  by  indignant 
reformers,  not  only  by  ardent  enthusiasts, 
but  also  by  calmly  considerate  and  enlightened 
people,  who  distinguish  clearly  between  fervor 
and  wisdom,  who  know  what  depths  of.  woe 
and  of  wrong  are  to  be  sounded,  but  who  also 
know  that  only  self-controlled  thoughtful- 
ness  and  well-disciplined  self-restraint  can 
devise  the  best  means  of  help.  As  we  also 
well  know,  we  look,  in  our  day,  to  highly 
trained  professional  skill  for  aid  in  such  work. 
We  do  not  hope  that  those  who  are  merely 
well-meaning  and  loving  can  do  what  most 
needs  to  be  done.  We  desire  those  who  know. 
Let  us  suppose,  then,  such  a  modern  com- 
munity as  especially  needing,  for  a  very 
special  purpose,  one  who  does  know. 

Hereupon  let  us  suppose  that  one  individual 
exists  whose  life  has  been  wounded  to  the 
core  by  some  of  treason's  worst  blows.  Let 

315 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

us  suppose  one  who,  always  manifesting  true 
loyalty  and  steadfastly  keeping  strict  integ- 
rity, has  known,  not  merely  what  the  ordinary 
professional  experts  learn,  but  also  what  it  is 
to  be  despised  and  rejected  of  men,  and  to 
be  brought  to  the  very  depths  of  lonely  deso- 
lation, and  to  have  suffered  thus  through  a 
treason  which  also  deeply  affected,  not  one 
individual  only,  but  a  whole  community. 
Let  such  a  soul,  humiliated,  offended,  broken, 
so  to  speak,  through  the  very  effort  to  serve  a 
community,  forsaken,  long  daily  fed  only  by 
grief,  yet  still  armed  with  the  grace  of  loyalty 
and  of  honor,  and  with  the  heroism  of  dumb 
suffering,  —  let  such  a  soul  not  only  arise, 
as  so  many  great  sufferers  have  done,  from  the 
depths  of  woe,  —  let  such  a  soul  not  only 
triumph,  as  so  many  have  done,  over  the 
grief  that  treason  caused;  but  let  such 
a  soul  also  use  the  very  lore  which  just  this 
treason  had  taught,  in  order  to  begin  a  new 
life  work.  Let  this  life  work  be  full  of  a 
shrewd,  practical,  serviceable,  ingenious  wis- 
dom which  only  that  one  individual  experi- 

316 


ATONEMENT 

ence  of  a  great  treason  could  have  taught. 
Let  this  new  life  work  be  made  possible  only 
because  of  that  treason.  Let  it  bring  to  the 
community,  in  the  contest  with  great  public 
evils,  methods  and  skill  and  judgment  and 
forethought  which  only  that  so  dear-bought 
wisdom  could  have  invented.  Let  these 
methods  have,  in  fact,  a  skill  that  the  traitor's 
own  wit  has  taught,  and  that  is  now  used  for 
the  good  work.  Let  that  life  show,  not  only 
what  treason  can  do  to  wreck,  but  what  the 
free  spirit  can  learn  from  and  through  the 
very  might  of  treason's  worst  skill. 

If  you  will  conceive  of  such  a  life  merely  as 
a  possibility,  you  may  know  why  I  assert  that 
genuinely  atoning  deeds  occur,  and  what  I 
believe  such  deeds  to  be.  For  myself,  any 
one  who  should  supply  the  facts  to  bear  out 
my  supposition  (  and  such  people,  as  I  assert, 
there  are  in  our  human  world)  would  appear 
henceforth  to  me  to  be  a  sort  of  symbolic 
personality,  —  one  who  had  descended  into 
hell  to  set  free  the  spirits  who  are  in  prison. 
When  I  hear  those  words,  "descended  into 

317 


THE  PROBLEM    OP    CHRISTIANITY 

hell,"  repeated  in  the  creed,  I  think  of  such 
human  beings,  and  feel  that  I  know  at  least 
some  in  our  human  world  to  whom  the  creed 
in  these  words  refers. 


Hereupon,  you  may  very  justly  say  that 
the  mere  effects  of  the  atoning  deeds  of  a 
human  individual  are  in  this  world  appar- 
ently petty  and  transient ;  and  that  even 
the  most  atoning  of  sacrificial  human  lives 
can  devise  nothing  which,  within  the  range 
of  our  vision,  does  make  the  world  of  the 
community  better,  in  any  of  its  most  tragic 
aspects,  than  it  would  be  if  no  treason  had 
been  committed. 

If  you  say  this,  you  merely  give  me  the 
opportunity  to  express  the  human  aspect  of 
the  idea  of  the  atonement  in  a  form  very  near 
to  the  form  which,  as  I  believe,  the  Christian 
idea  of  atonement  has  always  possessed  when 
the  interests  of  the  religious  consciousness 
(or,  if  I  may  use  the  now  favorite  word,  the 
subconsciousness)  of  the  Church,  rather  than 

318 


ATONEMENT 

the  theological  formulations  of  the  theory  of 
atonement,  have  been  in  question.  Christian 
feeling,  Christian  art,  Christian  worship,  have 
been  full  of  the  sense  that  somehow  (and  how 
has  remained  indeed  a  mystery)  there  was 
something  so  precious  about  the  work  of 
Christ,  something  so  divinely  wise  (so  skil- 
ful and  divinely  beautiful  ?)  about  the  plan 
of  salvation,  —  that,  as  a  result  of  all  this, 
after  Christ's  work  was  done,  the  world  as 
a  whole  was  a  nobler  and  richer  and  worthier 
creation  than  it  would  have  been  if  Adam  had 
not  sinned. 

This,  I  insist,  has  always  been  felt  to  be 
the  sense  of  the  atoning  work  which  the  faith 
has  attributed  to  Christ.  A  glance  at  a 
great  Madonna,  a  chord  of  truly  Christian 
music,  ancient  or  modern,  tells  you  that  this 
is  so.  And  this  sense  of  the  atoning  work 
cannot  be  reduced  to  what  the  modern 
"moral"  theories  of  the  Christian  atonement 
most  emphasize. 

For  what  the  Christian  regards  as  the  aton- 
ing work  of  Christ  is,  from  this  point  of  view, 

319 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

not  something  about  Christ's  work  which 
merely  arouses  in  sinful  man  love  and  repent- 
ance. 

No,  the  theory  of  atonement  which  I 
now  suggest,  and  which,  as  I  insist,  is  sub- 
consciously present  in  the  religious  senti- 
ment, ritual,  and  worship  of  all  Christendom, 
is  a  perfectly  "objective"  theory,  —  quite 
as  "objective"  as  any  "penal  satisfaction" 
theory  could  be.  Christian  religious  feeling 
has  always  expressed  itself  in  the  idea  that 
what  atones  is  something  perfectly  "objec- 
tive," namely,  Christ's  work.  And  this  aton- 
ing work  of  Christ  was  for  Christian  feeling 
a  deed  that  was  made  possible  only  through 
man's  sin,  but  that  somehow  was  so  wise  and 
so  rich  and  so  beautiful  and  divinely  fair  that, 
after  this  work  was  done,  the  world  was  a 
better  world  than  it  would  have  been  had 
man  never  sinned. 

So  the  Christian  consciousness,  I  insist, 
has  always  felt.  So  its  poets  have  often, 
in  one  way  or  another,  expressed  the  matter. 
The  theologians  have  disguised  this  simple 

320 


ATONEMENT 

idea  under  countless  forms.  But  every 
characteristically  Christian  act  of  worship 
expresses  it  afresh.  Treason  did  its  work  (so 
the  legend  runs)  when  man  fell.  But  Christ's 
work  was  so  perfect  that,  in  a  perfectly  ob- 
jective way,  it  took  the  opportunity  which 
man's  fall  furnished  to  make  the  world  better 
than  it  could  have  been  had  man  not  fallen. 

But  this  is  indeed,  as  an  idea  concerning 
God  and  the  universe  and  the  work  of  Christ, 
an  idea  which  is  as  human  in  its  spirit,  and 
as  deep  in  its  relation  to  truth,  as  it  is,  in 
view  of  the  complexity  of  the  values  which 
are  in  question,  hard  either  to  articulate  or  to 
defend.  How  should  we  know,  unless  some 
revelation  helped  us  to  know,  whether  and 
in  what  way  Christ's  supposed  work  made 
the  world  better  than  it  would  have  been  had 
man  not  sinned  ? 

But  in  this  discussion  I  am  speaking  of  the 
purely  human  aspect  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment. That  aspect  is  now  capable  of  a  state- 
ment which  does  not  pretend  to  deal  with 
any  but  our  human  world,  and  which  fully 
T  321 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

admits  the  pettiness  of  every  human  individual 
effort  to  produce  such  a  really  atoning  deed 
as  we  have  described. 

The  human  community,  depending,  as  it 
does,  upon  its  loyal  human  lovers,  and  wounded 
to  the  heart  by  its  traitors,  and  finding,  the 
farther  it  advances  in  moral  worth,  the 
greater  need  of  the  loyal,  and  the  greater 
depth  of  the  tragedy  of  treason,  —  utters  its 
own  doctrine  of  atonement  as  this  postulate, 
—  the  central  postulate  of  its  highest  spirit- 
uality. This  postulate  I  word  thus :  No 
baseness  or  cruelty  of  treason  so  deep  or  so 
tragic  shall  enter  our  human  world,  but  that 
loyal  love  shall  be  able  in  due  time  to  oppose 
to  just  that  deed  of  treason  its  fitting  deed 
of  atonement.  The  deed  of  atonement  shall 
be  so  wise  and  so  rich  in  its  efficacy,  that  the 
spiritual  world,  after  the  atoning  deed,  shall 
be  better,  richer,  more  triumphant  amidst 
all  its  irrevocable  tragedies,  than  it  was 
before  that  traitor's  deed  was  done. 

This  is  the  postulate  of  the  highest  form  of 
human  spirituality.  It  cannot  be  proved  by 

322 


ATONEMENT 

the  study  of  mankind  as  they  are.  It  can  be 
asserted  by  the  creative  will  of  the  loyal. 
Christianity  expressed  this  postulate  in  the 
symbolic  form  of  a  report  concerning  the 
supernatural  work  of  Christ.  Humanity  must 
express  it  through  the  devotion,  the  genius, 
the  skill,  the  labor  of  the  individual  loyal 
servants  in  whom  its  spirit  becomes  incarnate. 
As  a  Christian  idea,  the  atonement  is 
expressed  in  a  symbol,  whose  divine  inter- 
pretation is  merely  felt,  and  is  viewed  as  a 
mystery.  As  a  human  idea,  atonement  is 
expressed  (so  far  as  it  can  at  any  one  time 
be  expressed)  by  a  peculiarly  noble  and 
practically  efficacious  type  of  human  deeds. 
This  human  idea  of  atonement  is  also  expressed 
in  a  postulate  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all 
the  best  and  most  practical  spirituality. 
The  Christian  symbol  and  the  practical 
postulate  are  two  sides  of  the  same  life,  — 
at  once  human  and  divine. 


323 


VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 


LECTURE   VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

rpHROUGHOUT  these  lectures,  both  the 
-A-  contrast  and  the  close  connection  be- 
tween ethical  and  religious  ideas  have  been 
illustrated.  Ethical  ideas  define  the  nature 
of  righteous  conduct.  Religious  ideas  have 
to  do  with  bringing  us  into  union  with  some 
supremely  valuable  form  or  level  of  life. 
Morality  gives  us  counsel  as  to  our  duty. 
Religion,  pointing  out  to  us  the  natural 
poverty  and  failure  which  beset  our  ordinary 
existence,  undertakes  to  show  us  some  way 
of  salvation.  Ethical  teachings  direct  us  to 
a  better  mode  of  living.  Religion  undertakes 
to  lead  us  to  a  home-land  where  we  may  wit- 
ness, and,  if  we  are  successful,  may  share  some 
supreme  fulfilment  of  the  purpose  for  which 
we  live.  In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
counsel,  "Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged," 
is  ethical ;  the  beatitudes  are  religious. 
When  Paul  rebukes  the  Corinthians  for  their 

327 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

disputes,  his  teaching  is,  in  so  far,  ethical. 
When  he  writes  the  great  chapter  on  Charity, 
his  doctrine  is  religious. 

Now  what  I  here  mean  by  a  "doctrine  of 
life"  comprises  both  ethical  and  religious 
elements.  It  brings  these  elements  into  unity, 
and,  if  it  is  a  sound  doctrine,  it  gives  us  both 
a  connected  survey  of  some  notable  portion 
of  our  duty,  and  an  insight  into  the  nature 
and  source  of  the  supreme  values  of  our 
existence. 

A  religious  doctrine  very  generally  includes 
some  assertions  about  the  real  world  such 
that  they  can  be  elaborately  tested  only  in 
case  one  is  willing  to  undertake  a  metaphysical 
inquiry.  But,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen 
in  these  lectures,  both  ethical  and  religious 
doctrines  also  deal  with  many  matters  which 
we  can  test,  sufficiently  for  some  of  our  most 
serious  purposes,  without  raising  issues  which 
are  technically  and  formally  metaphysical. 
And  that  is  why  we  have  so  far  postponed  any 
metaphysical  study  of  the  foundations  which 
the  various  essential  ideas  of  Christianity 

328 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

possess  in  the  nature  of  the  real  universe. 
Both  the  ethical  significance  and  the  religious 
spirit  which  these  ideas  assure,  we  could  in 
large  measure  estimate  merely  by  taking  ac- 
count of  the  acknowledged  facts  of  human 
nature. 

A  doctrine  of  life  —  that  is,  a  coherent 
and  comprehensive  teaching  concerning  both 
the  moral  conduct  of  life,  and  the  realm  where- 
in the  highest  good  is  to  be  hoped  for,  sought, 
and,  haply,  won  —  will  therefore,  like  the 
various  ethical  and  religious  ideas  which  in- 
form such  a  general  survey  and  estimate  of 
human  life,  arouse  many  metaphysical  ques- 
tions. But,  in  large  part,  it  can  be  both 
stated  and  estimated  without  answering  these 
metaphysical  questions  in  a  technical  way. 

The  present  lecture  is  to  be  devoted  to 
bringing  together  the  essential  Christian  ideas 
which  we  have  considered  in  the  foregoing 
discussions,  and  to  stating,  as  the  result  of 
a  synthesis  of  these  ideas,  some  aspects  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life. 


329 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


This  lecture  will  presuppose,  and  will  not 
attempt  to  repeat,  many  of  the  most  familiar 
of  the  moral  precepts  which  characterize  the 
Christian  view  of  conduct.  What  I  have  time 
to  dwell  upon  ought  so  to  be  selected  that 
essential  and  weighty  matters  come  to  our 
notice.  But  if  any  one  finds  that  my  sketch 
omits  much  that  is  also  of  importance  for 
the  Christian  definition  of  our  duty,  let  him 
know  from  the  start  that  I  aim  at  certain 
larger  connections,  and  endeavor  to  set  down 
here  genuinely  Christian  teachings  about 
duty,  but  that  I  do  not  hope  to  be  exhaustive 
in  any  part  of  my  report. 

Such  moral  teachings  of  Christianity  as  I 
can  restate  will  be  intimately  connected  with 
Christian  views  about  life  which  are  also  re- 
ligiously important.  I  shall  make  no  effort 
to  keep  asunder,  in  my  sketch,  the  ethical 
teachings  and  the  religious  interests  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  our  study  of  the  ethical  value 

330 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    LIFE 

of  the  separate  ideas,  I  have  unhesitatingly 
passed  from  the  strictly  ethical  to  the  ob- 
viously religious  aspect  of  these  ideas,  when- 
ever it  was  convenient  to  do  so,  always  post- 
poning, for  reasons  which  I  have  repeatedly 
explained,  the  technically  metaphysical  prob- 
lems which  both  the  ethical  and  the  religious 
sides  of  the  questions  at  issue  have  involved. 
You  can,  for  convenience,  sunder  your 
treatment,  both  of  ethical  and  of  religious 
problems,  from  your  technical  metaphysics. 
But  ethics  and  religion,  in  a  case  such  as  that 
of  Christianity,  can  indeed  be  contrasted ; 
but  cannot  profitably  be  kept  apart  in  your 
exposition.  This,  I  suppose,  has  been  mani- 
fest at  each  stage  of  our  foregoing  discussion 
of  the  different  Christian  ideas.  It  will  be 
more  than  ever  manifest  in  the  present  por- 
trayal of  the  connected  whole  to  which  they 

belong. 

II 

What  is  essential  to  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  can  be  brought  to  mind,  at  this  point, 
more  readily  than  in  any  other  way  known  to 

331 


THE  PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

me,  by  a  very  brief  contrast  between  some 
features  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  the 
corresponding  features  of  the  greatest  his- 
torical rival  of  Christianity,  namely,  Buddh- 
ism. Of  the  latter  religion  I  know,  like 
most  philosophical  students  of  my  type  of 
training,  only  very  superficially,  and  mainly 
at  second  hand.  What  I  mention  regarding 
that  matter  has  therefore  merely  the  value  of 
emphasizing  the  contrast  to  which  I  am  to 
direct  attention,  and  of  thus  illustrating  the 
position  of  Christianity. 

Let  me  begin  my  sketch  by  pointing  out 
some  features  wherein  these  two  great  reli- 
gions agree. 

Both  Christianity  and  Buddhism  are  prod- 
ucts of  long  and  vast  processes  of  religious 
evolution.  Both  of  them  originally  appealed 
to  mature  and  complex  civilizations.  Yet 
both  of  them  intended  that  their  appeal 
should,  in  the  end,  be  made  to  all  mankind. 
Both  of  them  deliberately  transcended  the 
limits  of  caste,  of  rank,  of  nation,  and  of  race, 
and  undertook  to  carry  their  message  to  all 

332 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  Both  showed, 
as  missionary  religions,  an  immense  power  of 
assimilation.  Both  freely  used,  so  far  as  they 
could  do  so  without  sacrificing  essentials,  the 
religious  ideas  which  they  found  present  in 
the  various  lands  that  their  missionaries 
reached ;  and,  like  Paul,  both  of  them  became 
all  things  to  all  men,  if  haply  they  might 
thereby  win  any  man  to  the  faith  that  they 
thought  to  be  saving. 

Both  were  redemptive  religions,  which  con- 
demned both  the  mind  and  the  sins  of  the 
natural  man;  and  taught  salvation  through 
a  transformation  of  the  innermost  being  of  this 
natural  man.  Each  developed  a  great  variety 
of  sects  and  of  forms  of  social  life.  Each 
made  use  of  religious  orders  as  a  means  of 
separating  those  who,  while  desirous  of  salva- 
tion, were  able,  in  their  present  existence,  to 
live  only  in  a  close  contact  with  the  world, 
from  those  who  could  aim  directly  at  the  high- 
est grades  of  perfection. 

Each  of  these  two  religions  attempts,  by  a 
frank  exposure  of  the  centrally  important 

333 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

facts  of  our  life,  to  banish  the  illusions  which 
bind  us  fast  to  earth,  and,  as  they  both  main- 
tain, to  destruction.  Each  is  therefore,  in  its 
own  way,  austere  and  unsparing  in  the  speech 
which  it  addresses  to  the  natural  man.  Each 
shuns  mere  popularity,  and  is  transparently 
honest  in  its  estimate  of  the  vanities  of  the 
world.  Each  aims  at  the  heart  of  our  defects. 
Each  says:  "What  makes  your  life  a  wreck 
and  a  failure,  is  that  your  very  essence  as  a 
human  self  is,  in  advance  of  the  saving  process, 
a  necessary  source  of  woe  and  wrong.  Each 
of  the  two  religions  insists  upon  the  inmost 
life  of  the  heart  as  the  source  whence  proceeds 
all  that  is  evil,  and  whence  may  proceed  all 
that  can  become  good  about  man.  Each 
rejects  the  merely  outward  show  of  our  deeds 
as  a  means  for  determining  whether  we  are 
righteous  or  not.  Each  demands  absolute 
personal  sincerity  from  its  followers.  Each 
blesses  the  pure  in  heart,  requires  strict  self- 
control,  and  makes  an  inner  concentration  of 
mind  upon  the  good  end  an  essential  feature 
of  piety.  Each  preaches  kindliness  toward 

334 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

all  mankind,  including  our  enemies.  Each 
condemns  cruelty  and  malice.  Each,  in  fact, 
permits  no  human  enmities.  Each  is  a  re- 
ligion that  exalts  those  who,  in  the  world's 
eyes,  are  weak. 

And  not  only  in  these  more  distinctly  ethi- 
cal ideas  do  the  two  religions  agree.  Each  of 
them  has  its  own  world  of  spiritual  exalta- 
tion; its  realm  that  is  not  only  moral,  but 
deeply  religious  ;  its  home-land  of  deliverance, 
where  the  soul  that  is  saved  finds  rest  in 
communion  with  a  peace  that  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away. 

In  these  very  important  respects,  therefore, 
the  distinctly  religious  features  of  the  two 
faiths  are  intimately  related.  In  case  of  each 
of  the  two  religions,  but  in  the  case  of  Buddh- 
ism rather  more  than  in  the  case  of  Christi- 
anity, it  is  possible,  and  in  fact  just  and  requi- 
site, to  distinguish  its  ideas  of  the  nature  and 
the  means  and  the  realm  of  salvation  from 
the  metaphysical  opinions  which  a  more  or 
less  learned  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
faith  almost  inevitably  uses. 

335 


THE   PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Buddhism  has  its  ideas  of  the  moral 
order  of  the  universe,  of  Nirvana,  and  of  the 
Buddhas,  —  the  beings  who  attain  supreme 
enlightenment,  —  and  who  thereby  save  the 
world.  These  ideas  invite  metaphysical  spec- 
ulation, and  furnish  motives  that  tended 
towards  the  building  up  of  a  theology,  and 
that,  in  the  end,  produced  a  theology.  But 
each  of  these  religious  ideas,  in  the  case  of 
Buddhism,  can  be  defined  without  defining 
either  a  metaphysical  or  a  theological  system. 
The  original  teaching  of  Gotama  Buddha  re- 
jected all  metaphysical  speculation,  and  in- 
sisted solely  upon  the  ethical  foundations  of 
the  doctrine,  and  upon  those  distinctly  reli- 
gious, but  non-metaphysical,  views  of  salva- 
tion, and  of  the  higher  spiritual  life,  which 
Buddha  preferred  to  depict  in  parables, 
rather  than  to  render  needlessly  abstruse 
through  discussions  such  as,  in  his  opinion, 
did  not  tend  to  edification. 

The  common  ethical  and  religious  features 
of  Christianity  and  Buddhism  are  thus  both 
many  and  impressive.  Some  of  the  greatest 

336 


CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

life  questions  are  faced  by  both  religions,  and, 
in  the  respects  which  I  have  now  pointed  out, 
are  answered  in  substantially  the  same  way. 
Moreover,  in  several  of  the  ethical  and  reli- 
gious ideas  in  which  these  two  religions  agree 
with  each  other,  they  do  not  closely  agree  with 
any  other  religion.  So  far  as  I  can  venture 
to  judge,  no  other  religions  that  have  at- 
tempted to  appeal  to  the  deepest  and  most  uni- 
versal interests  of  mankind  have  been  so  free 
as  both  Buddhism  and  Christianity  are  from 
bondage  to  national,  to  racial,  and  to  worldly 
antagonisms  and  prejudices.  No  others  have 
made  so  central,  as  they  both  have  done,  the 
conception  of  a  personal  saviour  of  mankind, 
whose  dignity  depends  both  upon  the  moral 
merits  of  his  teaching  and  of  his  life,  and 
upon  the  religious  significance  of  the  spiritual 
level  to  which  he  led  the  way,  thus  moulding 
both  the  thoughts  and  the  lives  of  his  fol- 
lowers. 

When  we  add  to  all  these  parallels  the  fact 
that  each  of  these  religions  had  an  historical 
founder,  whose  life  later  came  to  be  the  object 
z  337 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  many  legendary  reports ;  and  that  the 
legends,  in  each  case,  were  so  framed  by  the 
religious  imagination  of  the  early  followers  of 
the  faith  in  question  that  they  include  a 
symbolism,  whereby  a  portion  of  the  true 
meaning  of  each  faith  is  expressed  in  the 
stories  about  the  founder,  —  when,  I  say,  we 
add  this  fact  to  all  the  others,  we  get  some  hint 
of  the  very  genuine  community  of  spirit  which 
belongs  to  these  two  great  world  religions. 
That  the  imaginative  Buddha-legends  show 
an  unrestrained  and  often  helpless  disposition 
to  adorn  the  religion  with  an  edifying  body 
of  miraculous  tales,  while  the  relative  self- 
restraint  of  the  early  Christian  Church  in 
holding  in  check,  as  much  as  it  did,  its  vig- 
orous myth-making  tendencies,  remains,  in 
many  respects,  a  permanent  marvel,  —  all 
this  constitutes  a  very  notable  contrast 
between  the  two  faiths.  But  this  is,  in  part, 
a  contrast  between  the  two  civilizations  (so 
remote,  in  many  ways,  from  each  other) 
whose  development  lay  at  the  basis  of  the 
two  religions.  Buddhism  was  more  sur- 

338 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

rounded  by  an  atmosphere  of  magic  than  the 
Christian  Church  ever  was.  Yet  in  those 
essentials  which  I  have  just  reported,  the 
agreements  and  analogies  between  the  two 
faiths  are  both  close  and  momentous.  So  far 
the  two  seem  to  be  genuine  co-workers  in  the 
same  vast  task  of  the  ages,  —  the  salvation  of 
man,  through  the  transformation  of  a  natural 
life  into  a  life  whose  dwelling-place  lies  be- 
yond human  woe  and  sin. 

Ill 

Wherein,  then,  lies  the  most  essential  con- 
trast between  the  Christian  and  the  Buddh- 
istic doctrines  of  life  ?  This  contrast,  when 
it  once  comes  to  light,  is,  to  my  mind,  far 
more  impressive  than  are  the  agreements. 
It  has  often  been  discussed.  What  I  say 
about  it  is  the  word  of  one  who  cannot  decide 
problems  of  the  comparative  history  of  reli- 
gion. But  I  must  venture  my  own  statement 
at  this  point,  despite  my  comparative  igno- 
rance of  Buddhism ;  because  the  contrast  in 
question  seems  to  me  so  illuminating  for  one 

339 


THE    PROBLEM     OF  CHRISTIANITY 

who  wishes  clearly  to  grasp  the  essence  of 
Christianity. 

The  most  familiar  way  of  stating  this  con- 
trast is  to  say  that  Buddhism  is  pessimistic, 
while  Christianity  is  a  religion  of  hope.  This 
is,  in  part,  true ;  but  it  is  not  very  enlighten- 
ing, unless  the  spirit  of  Christian  hopefulness 
is  more  fully  explained,  and  unless  the  Buddh- 
istic pessimism  is  quite  justly  appreciated. 
Both  religions  hope  for  salvation;  and,  for 
each  of  them,  salvation  means  an  overcoming 
of  the  world.  Each  deplores  humanity  as  it  is, 
and  means  to  transform  us.  The  contrast  is, 
therefore,  hardly  to  be  defined  as  a  contrast 
of  hope  with  despair.  For  each  undertakes 
to  overcome  the  world,  and  assures  us  that  we 
can  be  transformed.  And  each  regards  our 
natural  state  as  one  worthy  of  despair,  were 
not  the  way  of  salvation  opened. 

Nearer  to  the  whole  truth  seems  to  be  that 
frequently  repeated  statement  of  the  matter 
which  insists  upon  the  creative  attitude  which 
Christianity  requires  the  will  to  take,  as  against 
the  quietism  of  Buddha.  Buddhism,  as  we 

340 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

mentioned  in  a  former  lecture,  has  as  its  goal 
a  certain  passionless  contemplation,  in  which 
the  distinction  of  one  individual  from  another 
is  of  no  import,  so  that  the  self,  as  this  self, 
vanishes.  Christianity  conceives  love  as  posi- 
tively active,  and  dwells  upon  a  hope  of  im- 
mortality. 

Nevertheless,  the  concept  of  beatitude,  as 
the  Christian  thought  of  the  Middle  Ages 
formulated  that  concept,  sets  the  contem- 
plative life  nearer  the  goal  than  the  active 
life,  even  when  the  active  life  is  one  of  charity. 
Hence,  in  their  more  mystical  moods  and 
expressions,  the  two  religions  are,  once  more, 
much  more  largely  in  agreement  than  our  own 
very  natural  partisanship,  determined  by  our 
Christian  traditions,  tends  to  make  us  admit. 

It  is  also  true  that  Buddhism  aims  at  the 
extinction  of  the  individual  self ;  while  Chris- 
tianity assigns  to  the  human  individual  an 
infinite  worth.  And  this  is  indeed  a  vastly 
important  difference.  Yet  this  very  impor- 
tance remains  unexplained,  and  a  mere  for- 
mula, until  you  see  what  it  is  about  the  human 

341 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

individual  which  constitutes,  for  the  Christian 
view,  his  importance.  One  may  answer,  in  sim- 
ple terms,  that,  according  to  the  teachings  of 
Jesus,  the  individual  is  infinitely  important,  be- 
cause the  Father  loves  him ;  while  Buddhism, 
in  its  original  Southern  form,  has  nothing  to 
offer  that  is  equivalent  to  this  love  of  God  for 
the  individual  man.  Yet  the  further  question 
has  to  be  faced  :  Why  and  for  what  end  does 
the  God  of  Christianity  love  the  individual  ? 
And  it  is  here,  at  last,  that  you  come  face  to 
face  with  the  deepest  contrast. 

For  God's  love  towards  the  individual  is, 
from  the  Christian  point  of  view,  a  love  for  one 
whose  destiny  it  is  to  be  a  member  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is 
essentially  a  community.  And  the  idea  of 
this  community,  as  the  founder  in  parables 
prophetically  taught  that  idea,  developed  into 
the  conception  which  the  Christian  Church 
formed  of  its  own  mission;  and  through  all 
changes,  and  despite  all  human  failures,  this 
conception  remains  a  sovereign  treasure  of 
the  Christian  world. 

342 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

rv 

The  Individual  and  the  Community :  this, 
if  I  may  so  express  a  perfectly  human 
antithesis  in  religious  and  deliberately  sym- 
bolic speech,  —  this  pair  of  terms  and  of 
ideas  is,  so  to  speak,  the  sacred  pair,  to  whose 
exposition  and  to  whose  practical  application 
the  whole  Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  due. 
This  pair  it  is  which,  in  the  first  place,  enables 
Christianity  to  tell  the  individual  why,  in 
his  natural  isolation  and  narrowness,  he  is 
essentially  defective,  —  is  inevitably  a  failure, 
is  doomed,  and  must  be  transformed.  This, 
if  you  choose,  is  the  root  and  core  of  man's 
original  sin,  —  namely,  the  very  form  of  his 
being  as  a  morally  detached  individual.  This 
is  the  bondage  of  his  flesh ;  this  is  the  soul 
of  his  corruption;  this  is  his  alienation  from 
true  life ;  this  fact,  namely,  that  by  nature, 
as  a  social  animal,  he  is  an  individual  who, 
though  fast  bound  by  ties  which  no  man 
can  rend,  to  the  community  wherein  he 
chances  to  be  born  or  trained,  nevertheless, 

343 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

until  the  true  love  of  a  community,  and  until 
the  beloved  community  itself  appear  in  his 
life,  is  a  stranger  in  his  father's  house, 
a  hater  of  his  only  chance  of  salvation,  a 
worldling,  and  a  worker  of  evil  deeds,  a 
miserable  source  of  misery.  This  is  why,  for 
Christianity,  the  salvation  of  man  means  the 
destruction  of  his  natural  self,  —  the  sacrifice 
of  what  his  flesh  holds  dearest,  —  the  utter 
transformation  of  the  primal  core  of  the  social 
self.  I  say  :  it  is  the  merely  natural  relation 
of  the  individual  to  the  community  which,  for 
Christianity,  explains  all  this.  Here  are  the 
two  levels  of  human  existence.  The  individ- 
ual, born  on  his  own  level,  is  naturally  doomed 
to  hatred  for  what  belongs  to  the  other  level. 
Yet  there,  on  that  higher  level,  his  only 
salvation  awaits  him. 

Buddhism  fully  knows,  and  truly  teaches, 
where  the  root  of  bitterness  is  to  be  found,  — 
not  in  the  outward  deed,  but  in  the  inmost 
heart  of  the  individual  self.  But  what,  so 
far  as  I  know,  the  original  Southern  Buddhism 
never  clearly  made  a  positive  part  of  its  own 

344 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

plan  of  the  salvation  of  mankind,  is  a  trans- 
formation of  the  self,  not  through  the  mere 
destruction  of  the  narrow  and  corrupt  flesh 
which  alienates  it  from  the  true  life,  but  by 
the  simple  and  yet  intensely  positive  DEVOTION 
of  the  self  to  a  new  task,  —  to  its  creative  office 
as  a  loyal  member  of  a  beloved  community. 
Early  Buddhism  never,  so  far  as  I  know, 
clearly  defined  its  ideal  of  the  beloved  com- 
munity in  terms  which  make  that  community, 
viewed  simply  as  an  ideal,  one  conscious  unity 
of  the  business,  of  the  eager  hopes,  and  of  the 
patiently  ingenious  and  endlessly  constructive 
love,  of  all  mankind. 

The  ideal  Christian  community  is  one  in 
which  compassion  is  a  mere  incident  in  the 
realization  of  the  new  life,  not  only  of 
brotherly  concord,  but  also  of  an  intermi- 
nably positive  creation  of  new  social  values, 
all  of  which  exist  for  many  souls  in  one  spirit. 
The  ideal  Christian  community  of  all  man- 
kind is  to  be  as  intimate  in  its  enthusiasm 
of  service  as  the  daily  life  of  a  Pauline 
church  was  intended  by  the  apostle  to  be,  — 

345 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

and  as  novel  in  its  inventions  of  new  arts  of 
common  living  as  the  gifts  of  the  spirit  in  the 
early  Christian  Church  were  believed  to  be 
novel.  The  ideal  Christian  community  is  to 
be  the  community  of  all  mankind,  —  as  com- 
pletely united  in  its  inner  life  as  one  con- 
scious self  could  conceivably  become,  and  as 
destructive  of  the  natural  hostilities  and  of  the 
narrow  passions  which  estrange  individual 
men,  as  it  is  skilful  in  winning  from  the  in- 
finite realm  of  bare  possibilities  concrete  arts 
of  control  over  nature  and  of  joy  in  its  own 
riches  of  grace.  This  free  and  faithful  com- 
munity of  all  mankind,  wherein  the  individuals 
should  indeed  die  to  their  own  natural  life, 
but  should  also  enjoy  a  newness  of  positive 
life,  —  this  community  never  became,  so  far 
as  I  can  learn,  a  conscious  ideal  for  early 
Buddhism. 

How  far  the  Japanese  religion  of  loyalty, 
in  its  later  forms  of  modified  Buddhism,  or 
in  its  other  phases,  has  approached,  or  will 
hereafter  approach,  to  an  independent  and 
original  definition  of  the  positive  and  con- 

346 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

structive  ideal  of  a  conscious  and  universal 
human  community  which  is  here  in  question, 
I  am  quite  unable  to  judge.  The  Japanese 
Buddhist  sects  well  know  what  salvation  by 
grace  is.  They  well  conceive  and  accept  the 
doctrine  of  the  incarnation  of  the  divine  being 
in  a  supernatural  individual  man ;  and  are 
certainly  universal  in  their  general  concep- 
tions of  some  sort  of  human  brotherhood. 
And  they  have  reached  these  religious  ideas 
quite  apart  from  any  dependence  upon  Chris- 
tianity. 

But  what  I  miss  in  their  religious  concep- 
tions, so  far  as  I  have  read  reports  of  these 
conceptions,  is  such  a  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem of  human  life  in  terms  of  loyalty,  as 
at  once  demands  the  raising  of  the  human  self 
from  the  level  of  its  natural  narrowness,  to 
the  level  of  a  complete  and  conscious  personal 
membership  in  a  beloved  community,  and 
at  the  same  time  defines  the  ideal  community 
to  whose  level  and  in  whose  spirit  we  are  to 
live,  as  the  community  of  all  mankind,  and 
as  one  endlessly  creative  and  conscious  human 

347 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

spirit,  whose  life  is  to  be  lived  upon  its  own 
level,  and  of  whose  dominion  there  is  to  be, 
in  ideal  and  in  meaning,  no  end. 

The  familiar  article  in  the  Christian  creed 
which  expresses  this  perfectly  concrete  and 
practical  and  also  religious  ideal,  and  ex- 
presses it  in  terms  whose  ethical  and  whose 
religious  value  you  can  test  by  personal 
and  social  experience,  whatever  may  be  your 
own  definition  of  the  dogmas  of  the  Church, 
and  whatever  your  metaphysical  opinions 
may  be,  and  whatever  form  of  the  visible  or 
invisible  Church  chances  best  to  seem  to  meet 
this  your  interpretation,  —  the  familiar  arti- 
cle of  the  Christian  creed  which  expresses,  I 
say,  this  ideal,  just  as  an  ideal,  uses  the  words  : 
"I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  holy  Catho- 
lic Church,  the  communion  of  saints."  My 
earlier  exposition  of  this  idea  sadly  failed  if 
I  did  not  show  you  how  one  can  understand 
and  accept  the  spirit  of  this  article  of  the 
creed,  without  accepting  the  dogmas  or  the 
obedience  or  the  practice  of  any  one  form  of 
the  visible  Christian  Church.  But  it  was  this 

348 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

which  I  had  in  mind  when  I  said,  in  our 
opening  lecture,  that  Christianity  has  fur- 
nished mankind  with  its  most  impressive  and 
inspiring  vision  of  the  home-land  of  the 
spirit. 


Ethically  speaking,  the  counsels  which  this 
Christian  idea  of  the  community  implies,  in- 
clude all  the  familiar  maxims  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  all  the  lessons  of  the  par- 
ables, but  tend  to  give  to  them  such  sorts  of 
development  as  the  ideals  of  the  early  Church, 
in  Pauline  and  post-Pauline  times,  gradually 
gave  to  them.  Always  what  I  have  calif, d  the 
difference  between  the  two  levels  of  our  hu- 
man existence  must  be  borne  in  mind,  if  the 
interpretation  of  Christian  love  is  to  become  as 
concrete  as  Paul  made  it  in  his  epistles,  and 
as  concrete  as  later  ages  have  attempted  to 
keep  it,  even  while  developing  its  meaning. 

You  love  your  neighbor,  first,  because  God 
loves  him.  Yes,  but  how  and  why  does  God 
love  him  ?  Because  God  loves  the  Kingdom 

349 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

of  Heaven ;  and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  a 
perfectly  live  unity  of  individual  men  joined 
in  one  divine  chorus  —  an  unity  of  men  who, 
except  through  their  attachment  to  this  life 
which  exists  on  the  level  of  the  beloved  com- 
munity of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  would  be 
miserable  breeders  of  woe,  and  would  be  lost 
souls.  Let  your  love  for  them  be  a  love  for 
your  fellow-members  in  this  Kingdom  of 
Heaven. 

Yes ;  but  this  neighbor  is  your  enemy ; 
or  he  belongs  to  the  wrong  tribe  or  caste  or 
sect.  Do  not  consider  these  unhappy  facts 
as  having  any  bearing  on  your  love  for  him. 
For  the  ethical  side  of  the  doctrine  of  life 
concerns  not  what  you  find,  but  what  you  are 
to  create.  Now  God  means  this  man  to  be- 
come a  member  of  the  community  which 
constitutes  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;  and 
God  loves  this  man  accordingly.  View  him, 
then,  as  the  soldier  views  the  comrade  who 
serves  the  same  flag  with  himself,  and  who 
dies  for  the  same  cause.  In  the  Kingdom  you, 
and  your  enemy,  and  yonder  stranger,  are  one. 

350 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

For  the  Kingdom  is  the  community  of  God's 
beloved. 

As  for  the  way  in  which  you  are  to  love, 
make  that  way  of  loving,  to  your  own  mind, 
more  alive,  by  recalling  the  meaning  of  your 
own  dearest  friendships.  Think  of  the  closest 
unity  of  human  souls  that  you  know.  Then 
conceive  of  the  Kingdom  in  terms  of  such  love. 
When  friends  really  join  hands  and  hearts 
and  lives,  it  is  not  the  mere  collection  of  sun- 
dered organisms  and  of  divided  feelings  and 
will  that  these  friends  view  as  their  life.  Their 
life,  as  friends,  is  the  unity  which,  while  above 
their  own  level,  wins  them  to  itself  and  gives 
them  meaning.  This  unity  is  the  vine.  They 
are  the  branches. 

Now  of  such  unity  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  See,  then,  in  every  man  the  branch 
of  such  a  vine, --the  outflowing  of  such  a 
purpose,  —  the  beloved  of  such  a  spirit,  the 
incarnation  of  such  a  divine  concern  for  many 
in  one.  And  then  your  Christian  love  will 
be  much  more  than  mere  pity,  —  will  be 
greater  than  any  amiable  sympathy  with  the 

351 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

longings  of  those  poor  creatures  of  flesh  could, 
of  itself,  become.  Your  love  will  then  become 
the  Charity  that  never  faileth.  For  its  object 
is  the  Beloved  Community,  and  the  individual 
as,  ideally,  a  member  of  that  community. 

Is  such  a  regard  for  individuals  too  imper- 
sonal to  meet  the  spirit  of  the  parables  ?  No, 
—  it  does  not  destroy,  it  fulfils,  as  the  early 
Christian  Church,  in  ideal,  fulfilled  the  spirit 
of  the  parables.  Paul  spoke  thus,  and  thereby 
made  Christian  love  more  rather  than  less 
personal. 

If  by  person  you  merely  mean  the  morally 
detached  individual  man,  then  the  commu- 
nity, —  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  is  indeed 
superpersonal.  If,  by  person,  you  mean  a 
live  unity  of  knowledge  and  of  will,  of  love  and 
of  deed,  —  then  the  community  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  is  a  person  on  a  higher  level 
than  is  the  level  of  any  human  individual ; 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  at  once  within 
you,  and  above  you,  —  a  human  life,  and  yet 
a  life  whose  tabernacles  are  built  upon  a 
Mount  of  Transfiguration. 

352 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

Reconsider  familiar  parables  in  the  light 
of  such  an  interpretation,  —  an  interpreta- 
tion as  old  and  familiar  as  it  is  persistently 
ignored  or  misunderstood.  That,  I  insist, 
is  a  useful  way  of  restating  the  Christian 
moral  doctrine  of  life. 

Over  what  does  the  Father  in  the  parable 
of  the  Prodigal  Son  rejoice  ?  Over  the  mere 
delight  that  his  son's  presence  now  gives  him, 
and  over  the  feasting  and  the  merriment  that 
his  own  forgiving  power  supplies  to  the  re- 
pentant outcast  ?  No,  the  Father  has  won 
again,  not  merely  his  son  as  a  hungry  creature 
who  can  repent  and  be  fed.  The  Father  has 
won  again  the  unbroken  community  of  his 
family.  It  is  the  Father's  house  that  rejoices. 
It  is  this  community  which  makes  merry ; 
and  the  father  is,  for  the  moment,  simply  the 
incarnation  of  the  spirit  of  this  community. 

Why  is  there  more  joy  in  heaven  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth  than  over  ninety  and  nine 
just  persons  ?  Why  is  the  lost  sheep  sought 
in  the  wilderness  ?  Because  the  individual 
soul  has  its  infinite  meaning  in  and  through 
2A  353 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  unity  of  the  Kingdom.  The  one  lost 
sheep,  found  again,  —  or  the  one  repentant 
sinner,  —  symbolizes  the  restoration  of  the 
unity  of  this  community,  as  the  keystone 
stands  for  the  sense  of  the  whole  arch,  as 
the  flag  symbolizes  the  country. 

And  why,  in  the  parable  of  the  judgment, 
does  the  judge  of  all  the  earth  identify  him- 
self with  "the  least  of  these  my  brethren," 
with  the  stranger,  with  the  sick,  with  the 
captive  ?  Because  the  judge  of  all  the  earth 
is  explicitly  the  spirit  of  the  universal  com- 
munity, who  speaks  in  the  name  of  all  who  are 
one  in  the  light  and  in  the  life  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven. 

VI 

These  things  remind  us  how  ill  those  inter- 
pret the  teachings  of  the  Master  who  see  in 
them  a  merely  amiable  fondness  for  what 
any  morally  detached  individual  happens  to 
love  or  to  suffer  or  seem.  It  is  the  ideal  one- 
ness of  the  life  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
which  glorifies  and  renders  significant  every 

354 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

human  individual  who  loves  the  Kingdom,  or 
whom  God  views  as  such  a  lover.  And  be- 
cause Paul  had  before  him  the  life  of  the 
churches,  while  the  Master  left  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  for  the  future  to  reveal,  Paul's 
account  of  Christian  morals  is  an  enrichment, 
and  a  further  fulfilment  of  what  the  parables 
began  to  tell,  and  left  to  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  to  make  manifest. 

In  such  wise,  then,  are  the  familiar  precepts 
to  be  interpreted,  if  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
the  moral  life  is  to  be  what  it  was  intended 
to  be,  —  not  a  body  of  maxims  and  of  illus- 
trations, but  a  living  and  growing  expression 
of  the  life-spirit  of  Christianity. 

For  the  doctrine,  if  thus  interpreted,  points 
you  not  only  backwards  to  the  reported  words 
of  the  Master,  but  endlessly  forwards  into 
the  region  where  humanity,  as  it  continues 
through  the  coming  ages,  must,  with  an  un- 
wearied patience,  labor  and  experiment,  and 
invent  and  create.  The  true  moral  code  of 
Christianity  has  always  been  and  will  remain 
fluent  as  well  as  decisive.  Only  so  could  it 

355 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

express  the  Master's  true  spirit.  It  therefore 
must  not  view  either  the  parables  or  the 
sayings  as  a  storehouse  of  maxims,  or  even 
as  a  treasury  of  individual  examples  and  of 
personal  expressions  of  the  Master's  mind, 
expressions  such  that  these  maxims,  these 
examples,  and  these  personal  sayings  of  the 
Master  can  never  be  surpassed  in  their  ethical 
teachings.  The  doctrine  of  the  sayings  and  of 
the  parables  actually  cries  out  for  reinterpre- 
tation,  for  the  creation  of  a  novel  life.  That 
seems  to  me  precisely  what  the  founder  him- 
self intended.  The  early  apostolic  Churches 
fulfilled  the  Master's  teaching  by  surpassing 
it,  and  were  filled  with  the  spirit  of  their 
Master  just  because  they  did  so.  This,  to 
my  mind,  is  a  central  lesson  of  the  early  devel- 
opment of  Christianity. 

All  morality,  namely,  is,  from  this  point 
of  view,  to  be  judged  by  the  standards  of  the 
Beloved  Community,  of  the  ideal  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  Concretely  stated,  this  means  that 
you  are  to  test  every  course  of  action  not  by 
the  question :  What  can  we  find  in  the  par- 

356 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

ables  or  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  which 
seems  to  us  more  or  less  directly  to  bear  upon 
this  special  matter  ?  The  central  doctrine 
of  the  Master  was  :  "  So  act  that  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  may  come."  This  means :  So 
act  as  to  help,  however  you  can,  and  when- 
ever you  can,  towards  making  mankind  one 
loving  brotherhood,  whose  love  is  not  a  mere 
affection  for  morally  detached  individuals, 
but  a  love  of  the  unity  of  its  own  life  upon  its 
own  divine  level,  and  a  love  of  individuals 
in  so  far  as  they  can  be  raised  to  communion 
with  this  spiritual  community  itself. 

VII 

Now  if  we  speak  in  purely  human,  and  still 
postpone  any  speaking  in  metaphysical,  terms, 
the  community  of  all  mankind  is  an  ideal. 
Just  now,  just  in  this  year  or  on  this  day,  there 
exists  no  human  community  that  is  adequately 
conscious  of  its  own  unity,  adequately  crea- 
tive of  what  it  ought  to  create,  adequately 
representative,  on  its  own  level,  of  the  real 
and  human  communion  of  the  spirit.  Our 

357 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

best  communities  of  to-day  either  take  ac- 
count of  caste  or  of  nation  or  of  race,  as  all 
the  political  communities  do,  or  else,  when 
deliberately  aiming  at  universality  and  at 
religious  unity,  they  exclude  one  another; 
and  are  therefore  not,  in  an  ideal  sense  and 
degree,  beloved  communities.  Two  things,  if 
no  other,  stand  between  even  the  best  of  the 
churches  as  they  are,  —  between  them,  I  say, 
and  the  attainment  of  the  goal  of  the  truly 
beloved  and  the  universal  human  community. 

The  one  thing  is  their  sectarian  character, 
-  excluding,  as  they  do,  the  one  the  other. 
The  other  thing  is  their  official  organization, 
which  cultivates,  in  each  of  the  more  highly 
developed  communities  of  this  type,  a  respect 
for  the  law  at  precisely  the  expense  of  that 
which  Paul  experienced  in  case  of  the  legal 
aspect  of  the  Judaism  in  which  he  was 
trained. 

No,  —  the  universal  and  beloved  commu- 
nity is  still  hidden  from  our  imperfect  hu- 
man view,  and  will  remain  so,  how  long  we 
know  not. 

358 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

Nevertheless,  the  principle  of  principles  in 
all  Christian  morals  remains  this  :  —  "  Since 
you  cannot  find  the  universal  and  beloved 
community,  —  create  it."  And  this  again,  ap- 
plied to  the  concrete  art  of  living,  means : 
Do  whatever  you  can  to  take  a  step  towards 
it,  or  to  assist  anybody,  —  your  brother,  your 
friend,  your  neighbor,  your  country,  —  man- 
kind, —  to  take  steps  towards  the  organiza- 
tion of  that  coming  community. 

That,  I  say,  is  the  principle  of  principles 
for  Christian  morals.  But,  for  that  very 
reason,  there  can  be  no  code  of  Christian 
morals,  nor  any  one  set  of  personal  examples, 
or  of  sayings,  or  of  parables,  or  of  other  nar- 
ratives, which  will  do  more  than  to  arouse  us 
to  create  something  new  on  our  way  towards 
the  goal.  Christian  morality  will  not,  either 
suddenly  or  gradually,  conquer  the  world. 
But,  if  Christianity,  conceived  in  its  true 
spirit,  retains  its  hold  upon  mankind,  human- 
ity will  go  on  creating  new  forms  of  Christian 
morality ;  whose  only  persistent  feature  will 
be  that  they  intend  to  aid  men  to  make  their 

359 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

personal,  their  friendly,  their  social,  their 
political,  their  religious  orders  and  organiza- 
tions such  that  mankind  comes  more  and  more 
to  resemble  the  ideal,  the  beloved,  the  univer- 
sal community.  And  the  ethical  aspect  of 
the  creed  of  the  Christian  world  always  will 
include  this  article :  "I  believe  in  the  beloved 
community  and  in  the  spirit  which  makes  it 
beloved,  and  in  the  communion  of  all  who  are, 
in  will  and  in  deed,  its  members.  I  see  no 
such  community  as  yet;  but  none  the  less 
my  rule  of  life  is :  Act  so  as  to  hasten  its 
coming." 

Now  such  an  ethical  creed  is  not  a  vague 
humanitarian  enthusiasm.  For  it  simply  re- 
quires that  we  work  with  whatever  concrete 
human  materials  we  have  for  creating  both  the 
organization  of  communities  and  the  love  for 
them.  The  work  is  without  any  human  con- 
clusion that  we  can  foresee.  But  it  can  be 
made  always  definite,  simply  by  resoluteness, 
in  union  with  devotion.  That  is  the  type  of 
work  which  always  has  been  characteristically 
Christian,  and  which  promises  to  remain  so. 

360 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

vin 

The  Christian  idea  of  the  community  and  of 
its  relation  to  the  way  of  salvation  requires  for 
its  complete  appreciation  a  comparison  and 
synthesis  which  shall  also  include  the  idea  of 
Atonement. 

In  the  foregoing  lecture  we  endeavored  to 
set  the  religious  value  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment in  a  light  which  must  be,  for  many 
minds,  somewhat  novel ;  for  otherwise  the  idea 
of  atonement  would  not  have  been  so  long  and 
so  variously  rendered  more  mysterious  by  the 
technically  theological  treatment  which  has 
been  freely  devoted  to  it.  Nevertheless,  in 
its  deepest  spirit,  this  very  idea  of  atonement 
has  been  so  dear  to  the  religious  mind  of 
Christendom,  and  so  familiar  in  art,  in  worship, 
and  in  contemplation,  that  it  simply  ought 
not  to  appear  so  mysterious.  The  fate  of  the 
Christian  idea  of  atonement  has  been,  that 
what  Christian  piety  felt  to  be  the  head  of 
the  corner,  the  Christian  intellect  has  either 
rejected,  or  else,  even  in  trying  to  defend  the 

361 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

atonement,  has  made  a  stone  of  stumbling, 
and  a  rock  of  offence. 

Between  the  idea  of  the  saving  community 
and  the  idea  of  atonement,  lie  the  gravest  of 
Christian  ideas,  —  those  which  many  op- 
timists find  too  discouraging  to  face,  or  too 
austere  to  be  wholesome.  These  are:  the 
idea  of  sin,  the  idea  of  our  original  bondage  to 
sin,  and  the  idea  of  the  consequences  involved 
in  defining  sin  as  an  inner  voluntary  inclina- 
tion of  the  mind,  rather  than  as  an  outwardly 
manifest  evil  deed.  These  ideas  about  sin 
are  in  part  common,  as  we  have  said,  to  Chris- 
tianity and  to  Buddhism. 

But,  as  a  fact,  Christianity  has  so  developed 
these  very  ideas,  has  so  united  them  with  the 
conception  of  the  grace  and  of  the  loyalty  which 
save  men  from  their  natural  sinfulness,  that 
just  these  conceptions  regarding  sin,  despite 
the  fact  that  Matthew  Arnold  thought  them 
too  likely  to  lead  to  a  brooding  wherein  "  many 
have  perished,"  are  ideas  such  that  their  right- 
ful definition  renders  Christianity  what,  for 
Paul,  it  became,  a  religion  of  spiritual  freedom. 

362 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

In  our  studies  of  the  moral  burden  of  the 
individual,  and  of  the  realm  of  grace,  we  have 
seen  how  Christianity  is  a  religion  dependent, 
for  its  conception  of  original  sin,  upon  the 
most  characteristic  features  of  that  social 
cultivation  whereby  we  are  brought  to  a  high 
level  of  self -consciousness.  Early  Buddh- 
ism had,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  views  about 
the  nature  of  the  social  self  as  clear  as  those 
which  Paul  attained  and,  in  his  own  way, 
expressed.  But  this  very  doctrine  about 
"the  law,"  —  that  is,  about  the  social  origin 
of  the  individual  self,  and  about  that  which 
"causes  sin  to  abound,"  is  a  theory  which  lies 
at  the  root  of  the  power  and  the  right  of  Chris- 
tianity to  say,  to  the  self  which  has  first  at- 
tained sinful  cultivation  in  self-will,  and  which 
has  then  been  transformed  by  "grace"  into  a 
loyal  self,  precisely  what  Paul  said  to  his 
converts:  "All  things  are  yours."  For  the 
doctrine  of  Paul  is-,  that  the  escape  from  orig- 
inal sin  comes  through  the  acceptance  of  a 
service  which  is  perfect  freedom.  Out  of  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  sin  grows  the  Christian 

363 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

teaching  about  the  freedom  of  the  faithful,  — 
a  teaching  which,  in  its  turn,  lies  at  the  basis 
of  some  of  the  most  important  developments 
of  the  modern  mind.  The  doctrine  of  sin 
need  not  lead,  then,  to  brooding.  It  may 
lead  to  spiritual  self-possession. 

The  doctrine  of  atonement  enables  us  to 
extend  the  Pauline  theory  of  salvation  by 
grace,  so  that  not  merely  our  originally  help- 
less bondage  to  the  results  of  our  social  culti- 
vation is  removed  by  the  grace  of  loyalty,  but 
the  saddest  of  all  the  forms  and  consequences 
of  wilful  sin,  —  namely,  the  deed  and  the 
result  of  conscious  disloyalty,  can  be  brought 
within  the  range  which  the  grace  of  the  will 
of  the  community  can  reach.  The  result  of 
our  discussion  in  the  last  lecture  has  been 
that,  if  we  are  right,  the  idea  of  atonement 
has  a  perfectly  indispensable  office,  both  in 
the  ethical  and  in  the  religious  task  which  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  has  to  accomplish. 


364 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

IX 

Let  me  try  to  make  a  little  more  obvious 
the  interpretation  of  the  idea  of  atonement 
which,  in  the  last  lecture,  I  stated  in  outline. 
Let  me  use  for  this  purpose  another  illustra- 
tion. 

If  my  view  about  the  essence  of  the  idea  of 
atonement  is  correct,  the  first  instance  of  an 
extended  account  of  an  atoning  process  which 
the  Biblical  narratives  include,  would  be  the 
story  of  Joseph  and  his  brethren.  Let  us 
treat  this  story,  of  course,  as  obviously  a  little 
romance.  We  study  merely  its  value  as  an 
illustration.  The  brethren  sin  against  Joseph, 
and  against  their  father.  Their  deed  has 
some  of  the  characteristics,  not  of  mere  youth- 
ful folly,  but  of  maturely  wilful  treason. 
They  assail  not  merely  their  brother,  but  their 
father's  love  for  the  lost  son.  Their  crime  is 
carefully  considered,  and  is  deeply  treacherous. 
But  it  goes  still  farther.  The  treason  is  di- 
rected against  their  whole  family  community. 
Now,  in  the  long  run,  according  to  the  beauti- 

365 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ful  tale,  Joseph  not  only  comforts  his  father, 
and  is  able  to  be  a  forgiving  benefactor  to  his 
brethren,  but  in  such  wise  atones  for  the  sin 
of  his  brethren  that  the  family  unity  is  re- 
stored. Here,  then,  is  felt  to  be  a  genuine 
atonement.  Wherein  does  it  consist  ? 

Does  it  consist  in  this,  that  the  brethren 
have  earned  a  just  penalty  which,  as  a  fact, 
they  never  adequately  suffer;  while  Joseph, 
guiltless  of  their  wilful  sin,  vicariously  suffers 
a  penalty  which  he  has  not  deserved  ?  Does 
the  atonement  further  consist  in  the  fact  that 
Joseph  is  able  and  willing  freely  to  offer,  for 
the  good  of  the  family,  both  the  merits  and 
the  providential  good  fortune  which  this 
vicarious  endurance  of  his  has  won  ? 

No,  —  this  "penal  satisfaction"  theory  of 
the  atoning  work  of  Joseph,  if  it  were  proposed 
as  an  example  of  a  doctrine  of  atonement, 
certainly  would  not  meet  that  sense  of  justice, 
and  of  the  fitness  of  things,  and  of  the  true 
value  of  Joseph's  life  and  deeds,  —  that  sense, 
I  say,  which  every  child  who  first  hears  the 
story  readily  feels,  —  without  in  the  least 

366 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

being  able  to  tell  what  he  feels.  If  one 
magnified  the  deed  of  Joseph  to  the  infinite, 
and  said,  as  many  have  said,  "Such  a  work 
as  Joseph  did  for  his  brethren,  even  such  a 
work,  in  his  own  divinely  supreme  way  and 
sense  Christ  did  for  sinful  man,"  -would  that 
theory  of  the  matter  make  the  nature  of  atone- 
ment obvious?  Would  a  vicarious  "penal 
satisfaction"  help  one  to  understand  either  one 
or  the  other  of  these  instances  of  atonement  ? 
But  let  us  turn  from  such  now  generally 
discredited  "penal  satisfaction"  theories  to 
the  various  forms  of  modern  moral  theories. 
Let  us  say,  applying  our  explanations  once 
more  to  the  story  of  Joseph:  "God's  Prov- 
idence sent  Joseph  into  captivity,  through 
the  sin  of  his  brethren,  but  still  under  a  divine 
decree.  Joseph  was  obedient  and  faithful  and 
pure-minded.  God  rewarded  his  patience 
and  fidelity  by  giving  him  power  in  Egypt. 
Then  Joseph,  having  suffered  and  triumphed, 
set  before  his  brethren  (not  without  a  due 
measure  of  gently  stern  rebuke  for  their  past 
misdeeds),  an  example  of  love  and  forgiveness 

367 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

so  moving,  that  they  deeply  repented,  con- 
fessed their  sins,  and  loved  their  brother  as 
never  before.  That  was  Joseph's  atonement. 
And  that,  if  magnified  to  the  infinite,  gives 
one  a  view  of  the  sense  in  which  the  work  of 
Christ  atones  for  man's  sin."  Would  such 
an  account  help  us  to  understand  atonement, 
either  in  Joseph's  case,  or  in  the  other  ? 

I  should  reply  that  such  moral  theories  of 
atonement,  applied  to  the  story  of  Joseph, 
miss  the  most  obvious  point  and  beauty  of 
the  tale;  and  also  show  us  in  no  wise  what 
genuine  atoning  work  the  Joseph  of  the  story 
did.  Would  the  mere  repentance,  or  the  re- 
newed love  of  the  treacherous  brethren  for 
Joseph,  or  their  wish  to  be  forgiven,  or  their 
confession  of  their  sin,  constitute  a  sufficient 
ground  for  the  needed  reconciliation,  in  view  of 
their  offence  against  their  brother,  their  father, 
or  their  family  ?  If  this  was  all  the  atonement 
which  Joseph's  labors  supplied,  he  failed  in  his 
supposed  office.  Something  more  is  needed  to 
satisfy  even  the  child  who  enjoys  the  story. 

But  now,  let  us  become  as  little  children 

368 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

ourselves.  Let  us  take  the  tale  as  a  sensitive 
child  takes  it,  when  its  power  first  enters  his 
soul.  Let  us  simply  articulate  what  the  child 
feels.  Here,  according  to  the  tale,  is  a  pa- 
triarchal family  invaded  by  a  wilful  treason, 
wounded  to  the  core,  desolated,  broken. 
The  years  go  by.  The  individual  who  was 
most  directly  assailed  by  the  treason  is  guilt- 
less himself  of  any  share  in  that  treason. 
He  is  patient  and  faithful  and  obedient. 
When  power  comes  to  him,  he  uses  that  power 
(which  only  just  this  act  of  treason  could 
have  put  into  his  hands),  first,  to  accomplish 
a  great  work  of  good  for  the  community  of  a 
great  kingdom.  Herewith,  according  to  the 
tale,  he  provides  for  the  future  honor  and 
glory  of  his  own  family  for  all  time  to  come. 
And  then,  being  brought  once  more  into  touch 
with  his  family,  he  behaves  with  such  clem- 
ency, and  justice,  and  family  loyalty;  he 
shows  such  transient  but  amiable  brotherly 
severity  towards  the  former  traitors,  he  shows 
also  such  tender  filial  devotion ;  his  weeping 
when  the  family  unity  is  restored  is  so  rich  in 
2s  369 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

pathos ;  his  care  in  providing  for  his  father 
and  for  the  future  is  so  wise ;  his  creative 
skill  in  making  again  into  one  fair  whole 
what  treason  had  shattered  is  so  wonderful,  - 
that  all  these  things  together  make  the  situa- 
tion one  whereof  the  child  says  without  definite 
words,  what  we  now  say  :  "Through  Joseph's 
work  all  is  made,  in  fact,  better  than  it  would 
have  been  had  there  been  no  treason  at  all." 
Now  I  submit  that  Joseph's  atoning  work  con- 
sists simply  in  this  triumphantly  ingenious 
creation  of  good  out  of  ill.  That  the  breth- 
ren confess  and  repent  is  inevitable,  and  is  a 
part  of  the  good  result;  but  by  itself  that  is 
only  a  poor  offering  on  their  part.  It  is 
Joseph  who  atones.  His  atonement  is,  of 
course,  vicarious.  But  it  is  perfectly  ob- 
jective. And  it  is  no  vicarious  "penal  satis- 
faction" whatever.  It  is  simply  the  triumph 
of  the  spirit  of  the  family  through  the  devoted 
loyalty  of  an  individual.  This,  in  fact,  is, 
in  substance,  what  Joseph  himself  says  in  his 
closing  words  to  his  brethren. 

Joseph  turns  into  a  good,  for  the  family,  for 
370 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

the  world,  for  his  father,  for  the  whole  com- 
munity involved,  what  his  brothers  had  made 
ill.  In  his  deed,  through  his  skill,  as  well  as 
through  his  suffering,  the  world  is  made  better 
than  it  would  have  been  had  the  treason  never 
been  done.  This,  I  insist,  constitutes  his 
atoning  work. 

As  to  the  brethren,  —  their  treason  is,  of 
course,  irrevocable.  Joseph's  deed  does  not 
wipe  out  that  guilt  of  their  own.  But  they 
can  stand  in  the  presence  of  their  community 
and  hear  the  distinctly  reconciling  word : 
:'You  have  been  the  indirect  cause  of  a  good 
that,  by  the  grace  and  the  ingenuity  of  the 
community  and  of  its  faithful  servant,  has 
now  been  created,  while,  but  for  your  treason, 
this  good  could  not  have  been  created.  Your 
sin  cannot  be  cancelled.  Nor  are  you  in  any 
wise  the  doers  of  the  atoning  deed.  But  the 
community  welcomes  you  to  its  love  again, 
—  not  as  those  whose  irrevocable  deed  has 
been  cancelled,  but  as  those  whom  love  has  so 
overruled  that  you  have  been  made  a  source 
whence  a  spring  of  good  flows." 

371 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

The  repentant  and  thankful  brothers  can 
now  accept  this  reconciliation,  —  never  as  a 
destruction  of  their  guilt,  but  as  a  new  and  an 
objective  fact  whose  significance  they  are 
willing  to  lay  at  the  basis  of  a  new  loyalty. 
The  community  is  renewed;  the  spirit  has 
triumphed ;  and  the  traitors  are  glad  that  the 
irrevocable  deed  which  they  condemn  has  been 
made  a  source  of  a  good  which  never  could 
have  existed  without  it.  They  are  in  a  new 
friendship  with  their  community,  since  the 
ends  that  have  triumphed  unite  the  new  will 
with  the  old  and  evil  will,  through  a  new  con- 
quest of  the  evil. 

Let  my  illustration  pass  for  what  it  is 
worth.  I  still  insist  that  an  atonement  of  this 
sort,  if  it  occurs  at  all,  is  a  perfectly  objective 
fact,  namely,  the  creation  by  somebody  of  a 
definite  individual  good  on  the  basis  of  a 
definite  previous  evil.  That  the  total  result, 
in  a  given  case,  such  as  that  of  Joseph,  is 
something  better  than  would  have  existed,  or 
than  would  have  been  possible,  had  not  that 
evil  deed  first  been  done,  to  which  the  atoning 

372 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

deed  is  the  response,  — all  this,  I  say,  is  a 
perfectly  proper  matter  for  a  purely  objective 
study.  Such  a  study  has  the  difficulties 
which  attend  all  inquiries  into  objective  values. 
But  these  difficulties  do  not  make  the  matter 
one  of  arbitrary  whim. 

Moreover,  if  the  atoning  deed  has  brought, 
as  a  fact,  such  good  out  of  evil  that,  despite 
the  evil  deed,  the  world  is  better  than  it  could 
have  been  if  the  evil  deed  had  not  been  done, 
—  then  this  very  fact  has  its  own  reconciling 
value,  —  a  value  limited  but  precious.  The 
repentant  sinner,  seeing  what,  in  Adam's 
vision,  Milton  makes  the  first  human  sinner 
foresee,  will  rightly  find  a  genuine  consola- 
tion, and  a  true  reunion  with  his  community, 
in  thus  being  aware  that  his  iniquity  has  been 
overruled  for  good. 

A  theory  of  atonement,  founded  upon  this 
basis,  is  capable  of  as  technical  treatment  as 
any  other,  and  deals  with  facts  and  values 
which  human  wit  can  investigate,  so  far  as 
the  facts  in  question  are  accessible  to  us. 
Such  a  theory  of  atonement  could  be  applied 

373 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

to  estimate  the  atoning  work  of  Christ,  by 
any  one  who  believed  himself  to  be  suffi- 
ciently in  touch  with  the  facts  about  Christ's 
supposed  work.  It  would  be  capable  of  as 
technical  a  statement  as  our  knowledge  war- 
ranted. 

This  then,  in  brief,  is  my  proposal  looking 
towards  an  interpretation  of  the  idea  of  atone- 
ment. 

X 

Turning  once  more  to  view,  in  the  light  of 
this  interpretation,  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  in  its  unity,  we  may  see  how  all  the  ideas 
now  unite  to  give  to  this  doctrine  a  touch  both 
with  the  ethical  and  with  the  religious  interests 
of  humanity. 

To  sum  up :  As  individuals  we  are  lost ; 
that  is,  are  incapable  of  attaining  the  true  goal 
of  life.  This  our  loss  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
we  have  not  love.  So  the  Master  taught. 
But  the  problem  is  also  the  problem :  For 
what  love  shall  I  seek  ?  What  love  will  save 
me  ?  Here,  if  we  restrict  our  answer  to 
human  objects,  and  deliberately  avoid  theol- 

374 


ogy,  the  Christian  answer  is :  Love  the  Com- 
munity. That  is,  be  Loyal. 

Yet  one  further  asks :  What  community 
shall  I  love  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  has 
been  lengthily  discussed.  We  need  not  here, 
at  any  length,  repeat  it.  Speaking  still  in 
human  terms,  we  are  to  love  a  community 
which,  in  ideal,  is  identical  with  all  mankind, 
but  which  can  never  exist  on  earth  until  man 
has  been  transfigured  and  unified,  as  Paul 
hoped  that  his  churches  would  soon  witness 
this  transfiguration  and  this  union,  at  the 
end  of  the  world. 

So  far  as  this  ideal  indeed  takes  possession 
of  us,  we  can  direct  our  human  life  in  the 
spirit  of  this  love  for  the  community,  far 
away  as  the  goal  may  seem  and  be. 

Yet  what  stands  in  the  way  of  our  being 
completely  absorbed  by  this  ideal  ?  The 
answer  is :  Our  enemy  is  what  Paul  called 
the  flesh,  and  found  further  emphasized  by 
"the  law."  This  enemy  is  due  to  our  nature 
as  social  beings,  so  far  as  this  nature  is  cul- 
tivated by  social  conditions  which,  while 

375 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

training  our  self -consciousness,  even  thereby 
inflame  our  self-will.  This  our  social  nature, 
then,  is  the  basis  of  our  natural  enmity  both 
towards  the  law,  and  towards  the  spirit. 

How  can  this  natural  enmity  be  overcome  ? 
The  answer  is :  By  the  means  of  those  uni- 
fying social  influences  which  Paul  regarded 
as  due  to  grace.  Genius,  and  only  genius,  — 
the  genius  which,  in  the  extreme  cases,  founds 
new  religions,  and  which,  in  the  better  known 
cases,  creates  great  social  movements  of  a 
genuinely  saving  value,  can  create  the  com- 
munities which  arouse  love,  which  join  the 
faithful  into  one,  and  which  transform  the  old 
man  into  the  new.  When  once  we  have  come 
under  the  spell  of  such  creative  genius,  and 
of  the  communities  of  which  some  genius  ap- 
pears to  be  the  spirit,  —  only  then  can  we  too 
die  to  the  old  life,  and  be  renewed  in  the  spirit. 
The  early  Christian  community  is  (still  speak- 
ing in  human  terms)  one  great  historical  in- 
stance of  such  a  source  of  salvation.  To  be 
won  over  to  the  level  of  such  a  community  is, 
just  in  so  far,  to  be  saved. 

376 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

But  the  will  of  the  loyal  is,  in  the  purely 
human  and  practical  sense,  a  will  that  we  call 
free.  The  higher  the  spiritual  gifts  in  question 
are,  the  greater  is  the  opportunity  for  wilful 
treason  to  the  community  to  which  we  have 
once  given  faith.  The  consequences  of  every 
deed  include  the  great  fact  that  each  deed  is 
irrevocable.  And  the  penalty  of  wilful  trea- 
son, therefore,  is,  for  the  traitor,  —  precisely 
in  so  far  as  he  knows  himself,  and  values  his 
life  in  its  larger  connections,  —  an  essentially 
endless  penalty,  —  the  penalty  which  he  as- 
signs to  himself,  —  the  fact  of  his  sin. 

For  such  penalty  is  there  any  aid  that  can 
come  to  us  through  the  atoning  deed  of  an- 
other ?  There  is  such  aid  possible.  In  the 
human  world  we  can  never  count  upon  it. 
But  it  is  possible.  And  sometimes,  by  the 
grace  of  the  community,  and  by  the  free  will 
of  a  noble  soul,  such  aid  comes.  As  a  fact, 
the  whole  life  of  man  gets  its  highest  —  one  is 
often  disposed  to  say,  its  only  real  and  abiding 
—  goods,  from  the  conquest  over  ill.  Atoning 
deeds,  deeds  that,  through  sacrifices,  win 

377 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

again  the  lost  causes  of  the  moral  world,  not 
by  undoing  the  irrevocable,  nor  by  making 
the  old  bitterness  of  defeat  as  if  it  never 
had  been,  but  by  creating  new  good  out  of 
ancient  ill,  and  by  producing  a  total  realm  of 
life  which  is  better  than  it  would  have  been 
had  the  evil  not  happened,  —  atoning  deeds 
express  the  most  nearly  absolute  loyalty 
which  human  beings  can  show.  The  atoning 
deeds  are  the  most  creative  of  the  expressions 
which  the  community  gives,  through  the  deed 
of  an  individual,  to  its  will  that  the  unity  of 
the  spirit  should  triumph,  not  only  despite, 
but  through.,  the  greatest  tragedies,  —  the 
tragedies  of  deliberate  sin. 

Through  the  community,  or  on  its  behalf, 
the  atoning  deeds  are  done.  The  individual 
who  has  sinned,  but  who  knows  of  free  atoning 
deeds  that  indeed  have  been  done,  —  deeds 
whereby  good  comes  out  of  his  evil,  —  can  be 
not  wholly  reconciled  to  his  own  past,  but 
truly  restored  to  the  meaning  of  the  loyal 
life.  Upon  the  hope  that  such  atoning  deeds, 
if  they  have  not  been  done  because  of  our  sins, 

378 


CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  LIFE 

may  yet  be  done,  all  of  us  depend  for  such  re- 
winning  of  our  spiritual  relations  to  our  com- 
munity as  we  have  sinned  away.  And  thus 
the  idea  of  the  community  and  the  idea  of 
atonement,  —  both  of  them,  still  interpreted 
in  purely  human  fashion,  but  extended  in 
ideal  through  the  whole  realm  that  the  human 
spirit  can  ever  conquer,  form  in  their  insep- 
arable union,  and  in  their  relation  to  the 
other  Christian  ideas,  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life.  The  Christian  life  is  one  that  first, 
as  present  in  the  individual,  offers  to  the 
community  practical  devotion  and  absorb- 
ing love.  This  same  life,  also  present  in  the 
individual,  looks  to  the  community  for  the 
grace  that  saves  and  for  the  atonement  that, 
so  far  as  may  be,  reconciles.  As  incorporate 
in  the  community,  or  as  incarnate  in  those  who 
act  as  the  spirit  of  the  community,  and  who 
create  new  forms  of  the  community,  and 
originate  atoning  deeds,  —  as  thus  present  in 
the  community  and  in  its  creatively  loyal  in- 
dividual members,  the  Christian  life  expresses 
the  postulate,  the  prayer,  the  world-conquer- 

379 


THE    PROBLEM    O.F    CHRISTIANITY 

ing  will,  whose  word  is  :  Let  the  spirit  triumph. 
Let  no  evil  deed  be  done  so  deep  in  its  treach- 
ery but  that  creative  love  shall  find  the  way 
to  make  the  world  better  than  it  would  have 
been  had  that  evil  deed  not  been  done. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  life  consists  in 
observing  and  asserting  that  these  ideas  have 
their  real  and  distinctly  human  basis.  This 
doctrine  also  consists  in  the  purely  voluntary 
assertion  that,  in  so  far  as  these  ideals  are  not 
yet  verifiable  in  human  life  as  it  is,  this  life  is 
to  be  lived  as  if  they  were  verifiable,  or  were 
sure  to  become  so  in  the  fulness  of  time. 
For  that  fulness  of  time,  for  that  coming  of 
the  Kingdom,  we  both  labor  and  wait. 


380 


VIII 

THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 
IDEAS 


LECTURE  VIII 

THE  MODERN  MIND  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 
IDEAS 

THROUGHOUT  our  exposition  of  the 
ideas  which,  in  their  unity,  constitute 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  we  have  intended 
to  bring  to  light  the  relations  of  these  ideas  to 
the  modern  mind.  Whenever  we  have  at- 
tempted to  define  what  we  mean  by  the 
modern  mind,  we  have  been  guided  by  two 
considerations.  First,  certain  opinions  and 
mental  attitudes  seem  to  be  characteristic  of 
leading  teachers  and  of  representative  ten- 
dencies in  our  own  day.  Secondly,  these 
prominent  ideas  of  our  day  express  general 
lessons  which  the  history  of  mankind  appears 
to  us  to  have  taught.  We  have  accepted  the 
postulate  that  history  includes  a  more  or  less 
coherent  education  of  the  human  race ;  and 
then  have  we  viewed  the  modern  mind  as  the 
present  heir  to  this  wisdom.  And  therefore 
some  at  least  of  the  prominent  ideas  of  our 

383 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

day  have  seemed  to  deserve  their  prominence 
because  they  express  part  of  the  lesson  of 
history. 

How  vague  the  resulting  general  conception 
of  the  modern  mind  and  of  its  opinions  neces- 
sarily is,  we  have  acknowledged.  But  the  con- 
ception is  useful,  simply  because  it  enables 
us  to  summarize  a  type  of  convictions  that 
possess  indeed  no  supreme  authority,  but 
that  are  signs  which  men  must  interpret,  and 
leadings  which  they  must  attempt  to  follow, 
if  they  are  to  take  part  in  that  collective 
human  life  which  is  to  record  itself  in  future 
history,  and  if  our  age  is  to  teach  any  lesson 
to  those  who  shall  come  after  us. 

The  present  lecture  will  be  devoted  to  a 
summary  of  some  of  the  lessons  which  the 
history  of  religion  seems  to  have  taught 
mankind,  and  to  a  general  study  of  the  bear- 
ing of  these  lessons  upon  our  estimate  of  the 
present  and  the  future  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. 


384 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 


There  are  three  lessons  of  religious  history, 
and  three  views  prominent  in  recent  discussion, 
which  may  be  said  to  form  part  of  the  charac- 
teristically modern  view  of  the  meaning  and 
destiny  of  religion. 

First,  religion  is,  historically  speaking,  a 
product  of  certain  human  needs ;  and  its  en- 
durance depends  upon  its  power  to  meet  those 
needs.  A  religion  which  ceases  to  strengthen 
hearts  and  to  fulfil  the  just  demands  of  the 
human  spirit  for  guidance  through  the  wilder- 
ness of  this  world,  is  doomed ;  and  in  due  time 
passes  away ;  as  the  religion  of  Greco-Roman 
antiquity  decayed  and  died ;  and  as  countless 
tribal  and  national  religions  have  died,  along 
with  the  social  orders  and  cultures  which 
they,  in  their  day,  sustained  and  inspired. 

To  use  a  metaphor  which  I  believe  to  be 
neither  trivial  nor  unjust :  The  gods,  as  man 
conceives  the  gods,  live  upon  spiritual  food ; 
but,  viewed  in  the  light  of  history,  they  appear 
as  beings  who  must  earn  their  bread  by  supply- 
2c  385 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ing,  in  their  turn,  the  equally  spiritual  suste- 
nance which  their  worshippers  need.  And 
unless  they  thus  earn  their  bread,  the  gods  die ; 
and  the  holy  places  that  have  known  them, 
know  them  no  more  forever.  Let  the  ruins 
of  ancient  temples  suggest  the  meaning  that 
lies  behind  my  figure  of  speech. 

To  make  this  assertion  concerning  the  in- 
evitable fortunes  of  all  religions,  is  not  to  re- 
duce the  conception  of  religious  truth  to  that 
which  current  pragmatism  emphasizes.  The 
relation  between  the  two  conceptions  of  reli- 
gious truth  which  are  in  question  will  concern 
us  in  our  later  lectures.  Here  it  is  enough  to 
say  that  I  am  not  now  deciding  whether  or 
no  any  religious  truth  is  absolute ;  but  am 
expressly  limiting  myself  to  the  forms  under 
which  religious  truth  and  error  enter  human 
history. 

The  needs  of  the  worshippers  determine,  in 
the  long  run,  the  historical  fate  of  religions. 
It  is  just,  however,  to  add,  that  worshippers 
actually  need  an  everlasting  gospel ;  and  that, 
if  such  a  gospel  were  to  be  revealed  to  man,  it 

386 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

would  not  only  satisfy  human  needs,  but  also 
contain  absolute  religious  truth. 

What  I  thus  point  out  is  simply  meant  to 
emphasize  the  assertion  that  the  realm  of 
religion  is  a  realm,  not  of  merely  natural  facts, 
but  of  will  and  of  need,  of  desire,  of  longing, 
and  of  satisfaction.  In  other  words,  as  it  is 
now  customary  to  state  the  case,  religion  is 
mainly  concerned,  not  with  facts  that  belong 
to  the  material  world,  but  with  values.  Re- 
ligion, meanwhile,  aims  at  the  absolute,  but 
has  no  vehicle  to  carry  its  message  to  our- 
selves except  the  vehicle  of  human  experience. 
The  goal  of  religion  is  something  beyond  all  our 
transient  strivings.  But  its  path  lies  through 
the  realm  of  human  needs. 

And  so,  when  a  religion  loses  touch  with 
human  needs,  it  dies. 

II 

Such  is  the  first  of  the  three  modern  opinions 
about  religion  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention. 
The  second  may  be  stated  in  well-known  terms. 
We  live  in  an  age  when  there  have  already 

387 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

occurred  great  recent  changes  in  the  spiritual 
needs  whereof  men  are  conscious.  And  in  the 
near  future  still  greater  changes  in  these  needs 
are  likely  to  be  felt. 

Those  changes  in  the  needs  of  mankind 
which  led  to  the  decay  and  death  of  the 
religions  of  antiquity  were  petty  in  contrast 
to  the  vast  transformations  of  the  human 
spirit  to  which  our  modern  conditions  seem 
likely  to  lead  within  the  next  few  centuries. 
Physical  science  and  the  industrial  arts  are 
altering  the  very  foundations  of  our  culture, 
of  our  social  order,  and  of  our  opinions  regard- 
ing nature.  This  alteration  is  now  taking 
place  at  a  rate  for  which  no  previous  age  of 
human  history  furnishes  any  parallel.  Apart 
from  chance  catastrophes,  which  seem  un- 
likely to  happen,  these  processes  of  mental 
and  of  social  change  are  likely  to  continue 
at  a  constantly  increasing  rate.  In  conse- 
quence, man's  whole  spiritual  outlook  will 
probably  soon  become  different  from  any 
outlook  that  men  have  ever  before  experi- 
enced. This  law  of  constantly  accelerated 

388 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

change  promises  to  dominate  the  most 
essential  interests  of  the  civilization  of  the 
near  future. 

Concerning  this  second  thesis  which  I  here 
attribute  to  the  modern  mind,  there  is  likely 
to  be  little  difference  of  opinion  amongst  us. 
Many  of  us  fear  or  deplore  great  spiritual 
changes.  We  all  feel  sure  that  such  will  soon 
occur.  We  know  that,  regarding  all  such 
matters,  we  have  indeed  no  right  to  predict 
the  future  of  humanity  in  any  but  the  most 
general  terms.  Yet  the  prospect  of  very 
rapid  and  vast  mental  and  social  transfor- 
mations, in  the  near  future  of  civilization,  is 
emphasized  in  our  minds  by  innumerable 
considerations.  Few  of  us  are  disposed  to 
believe  that,  were  we  permitted  to  return  to 
earth  a  very  few  centuries  from  now,  we  should 
find  that  even  the  dearest  and  oldest  of  the 
traditional  features  of  our  civilization  had 
remained  exempt  from  momentous  and,  to  our 
minds,  bewildering  alterations. 

The  wildest  flights  of  imagination  regarding 
such  possibilities  often  seem  to  us  instructive, 

389 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

just  because  they  help  us  to  read  one  great 
warning  which  the  modern  world  gives  us. 
This  is  the  warning  that  nothing  in  human 
affairs  is  so  sacred  as  to  be  sure  of  escaping 
the  workings  of  this  law  of  accelerated  change. 

Ill 

The  third  of  the  modern  opinions  which  I 
here  have  in  mind  is  closely  associated  with 
the  two  foregoing  theses. 

In  ancient  civilizations  the  religious  insti- 
tutions were  often  supported  by  the  whole 
social  power  of  the  peoples  concerned,  so 
that  the  religious  life  of  a  nation  belonged  to 
whatever  was  most  characteristic  and  most 
conservative  about  the  civilization  in  question. 
In  the  Middle  Ages,  despite  the  enormous 
complexity  of  the  Christian  social  order,  the 
religious  institutions  still  formed  a  very  large 
part  of  what  was  most  essential  to  European 
culture.  But  in  recent  times  religious  insti- 
tutions— institutions  of  the  nature  of  churches, 
of  sects,  or  of  religious  orders  —  stand  in  a 
much  less  central  position  in  our  organized 

390 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

social  life  than  ever  before.  The  tangible 
social  importance  of  these  institutions  grows 
constantly  less  rather  than  greater.  Had  all 
the  temples  of  a  typical  ancient  city,  and  had 
all  its  priests  and  sacred  places,  been  suddenly 
destroyed,  so  that  none  of  the  customary 
festivals  and  sacrifices  could  be  carried  on, 
we  know  how  tragically  the  whole  life  of  that 
city  would  have  been  disturbed,  if  not  wholly 
paralyzed.  But  our  modern  industrial  arts, 
our  world-wide  commerce,  our  daily  business, 
our  international  relations,  grow  constantly 
more  and  more  independent  of  any  ecclesi- 
astical and,  in  fact,  of  any  public  religious 
activities  or  institutions ;  so  that,  if  all 
churches  and  priesthoods  and  congregations 
were  temporarily  to  suspend  their  public 
functions  and  their  visible  doings,  our  market- 
places and  factories  and  merchants  and  armies 
would  continue  to  go  on,  for  the  time,  much 
as  usual. 

In  consequence,  in  the  modern  world,  reli- 
gion no  longer  has  the  effective  institutional 
support  of  the  whole  collective  social  will, 

391 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

but  lives  more  apart  from  the  other  great 
social  interests,  and  dwells  more  in  a  realm 
where  internal  faith  rather  than  publicly 
administered  law  determines  the  range  of  its 
control.  Hence  when  the  social  world  is 
subject  to  forces  which  tend  towards  change, 
religion  no  longer  stands  at  the  point  where 
the  most  conservative  powers  of  society  are 
massed.  Religion  must  depend  for  its  ability 
to  resist  change  upon  new  weapons.  Con- 
servatism will  no  longer  stand  as  its  potent 
and  natural  defender.  The  human  needs 
that  it  is  to  meet  will  be  in  a  state  of  constant 
growth.  The  visible  social  organizations 
which  have  been  its  closest  allies  in  the 
past  can  no  longer  be  counted  upon  to  pre- 
serve its  visible  forms.  Once,  when  the 
temples  and  the  gods  were  threatened,  all 
the  state  rose  as  one  man  to  defend  them. 
For  they  were  the  centre  of  the  social  order. 
But  henceforth  commerce  and  industry  will 
tend  to  take  the  place  in  men's  minds  which 
religious  institutions  once  occupied.  The 
things  of  the  spirit  must  now  be  defended 

392 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

with  the  sword  of  the  spirit.  Worldly  weapons 
can  no  longer  be  used  either  to  propagate  or 
to  preserve  religion.  Religion  must  find  its 
own  way  to  the  hearts  of  the  coming  genera- 
tions. And  these  hearts  will  be  stirred  by 
countless  new  cares  and  hopes.  The  human 
problem  of  religion  will  grow  constantly  more 
complicated. 

Our  three  assertions  of  the  modern  mind 
regarding  religion  define  for  us,  then,  the 
religious  problem  of  the  future.  No  religion 
can  survive  unless  it  keeps  in  touch  with  men's 
conscious  needs.  In  the  future  men's  needs 
will  be  subject  to  vastly  complex  and  rapidly 
changing  social  motives.  In  the  future,  reli- 
gion, as  a  power  aiming  to  win  and  to  keep  a 
place  in  men's  hearts,  can  no  longer  perma- 
nently count  on  the  institutional  forces  which 
have  in  the  past  been  amongst  its  strongest 
supports.  Its  own  institutions  will  tend,  with 
the  whole  course  of  civilization,  to  come 
increasingly  under  the  sway  of  the  law  of 
accelerated  change.  The  non-religious  insti- 
tutions of  the  future,  the  kingdoms  and  the 

393 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

democracies  of  this  world,  the  social  structures 
which  will  be  used  for  the  purposes  of  pro- 
duction, of  distribution,  and  of  political  life, 
will  certainly  exemplify  the  law  of  accelerated 
change.  And  these  social  structures  will  not 
be  under  the  control  of  religious  institutions. 

IV 

Such  are  some  of  the  lessons  which  history 
and  the  present  day  teach  to  the  modern 
mind.  Such  are  the  conditions  which  deter- 
mine the  religious  problems  of  the  future. 
What  shall  we  say  of  these  problems,  in  their 
bearing  upon  Christianity  ? 

In  answer  we  can  only  take  account  of 
what  we  have  gained  for  an  understanding  of 
our  situation  through  our  study  of  the  Chris- 
tian ideas.  What  we  need  is  to  look  again 
at  the  sword  of  the  spirit  which  is  still  in  the 
hands  of  religion. 

Were  the  strength  of  the  Christian  religion, 
in  its  contest  with  the  coming  modern  world, 
mainly  the  strength  of  its  already  existing 
religious  institutions,  we  can  see  at  once 

394 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

that  all  the  three  considerations  which  we 
have  just  emphasized  would  combine  to  make 
the  prospects  of  the  contest  doubtful.  It  is 
true  that  no  reasonable  man  ought  for  a 
moment  to  underestimate  the  actual  vitality 
of  the  religious  institutions  of  the  Christian 
world,  viewed  simply  as  institutions.  Asser- 
tions are  indeed  sometimes  made  to  the  effect 
that  the  Church,  in  all  its  various  forms  and 
divisions,  or  in  very  many  of  them,  is  already 
very  rapidly  losing  touch,  or  has  already 
hopelessly  lost  touch,  with  the  modern  world; 
and  that  here  the  process  of  estrangement 
between  the  Church  and  modern  life  is  con- 
stantly accelerated.  Some  observers  even  ven- 
ture to  predict  a  rapid  dwindling  of  all  or  most 
of  the  ecclesiastical  institutions  of  Christendom 
in  the  near  future.  I  suppose  all  such  extreme 
assertions  to  be  hasty  and  unwarranted. 
What  we  can  see  is  merely  this :  that  if  the 
future  of  Christianity  depended  upon  its  insti- 
tutions rather  than  upon  its  ideas,  the  result 
of  changes  that  lie  before  us  would  be  doubtful. 
But  our  study  of  the  Christian  ideas  has 
335 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

shown  that  the  deepest  human  strength  of 
this  religion  lies  precisely  in  these  ideas  them- 
selves. By  the  might  of  these  ideas  early 
Christianity  conquered  the  Roman  world. 
In  the  light  of  these  ideas  European  civiliza- 
tion has  since  been  transformed ;  and  by  their 
spirit  it  still  guides  its  life.  These  Christian 
ideas,  —  not  their  formulations  in  the  creeds, 
—  not  their  always  inadequate  institutional 
embodiment,  —  and  of  course  not  any  ab- 
stract statement  of  them  such  as  our  philo- 
sophical sketch  has  attempted,  —  these  ideas 
constitute  the  sword  of  the  spirit  with  which 
the  Christian  religion  has  to  carry  on  its 
warfare.  What  makes  its  contest  with  the 
world  of  the  future  hopeful  is  simply  the  fact 
that,  whatever  creed  or  institution  or  practice 
may  lose  its  hold  on  the  modern  mind,  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  the  expression  of 
universal  human  needs,  —  and  of  the  very 
needs  upon  whose  satisfaction  the  very  life 
of  every  social  order  depends  for  its  worth 
and  for  its  survival.  No  progress  in  the 
industrial  arts,  and  no  massing  of  population 

396 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

or  of  wealth,  and  no  scheme  of  political  re- 
form, can  remove  from  the  human  mind  and 
the  human  heart  these  needs,  and  the  ideas 
that  alone  can  satisfy  them.  As  for  social 
changes,  they  will  inevitably  mean  vast 
social  tragedies.  But  such  tragedies  can  only 
emphasize  the  very  longings  to  which  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  appeals.  Whatever 
happens  to  any  of  the  visible  forms  and  insti- 
tutions of  Christianity,  the  soul  of  this  reli- 
gion can  always  defiantly  say  to  itself:  — 

Stab  at  thee  then  who  will; 
No  stab  the  soul  can  kill. 

With  this  interpretation  of  its  mission  pres- 
ent to  its  mind,  it  can  face  all  its  enemies  with 
all  the  might  of  the  spirit  upon  its  side.  It 
is  this  view  of  the  relation  between  the  Chris- 
tian ideas  and  the  modern  world  which  I  here 
wish  to  emphasize. 

To  accomplish  this  end,  we  have  merely  to 
sum  up  what  our  whole  study  has  already 
taught  us,  and  to  contrast  our  views  with 
those  which  some  other  accounts  of  the  prob- 
lem of  Christianity  have  defended. 

397 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


Many,  in  our  day,  are  disposed  to  think 
that  the  true,  or  perhaps  also  the  last,  refuge 
of  religion  is  some  form  of  mystical  piety. 
Retire  from  the  world ;  seek  rest  in  what 
Meister  Eckhart  called  the  wilderness  of  the 
Godhead ;  win  an  immediate  experience  of 
the  presence  of  the  divine ;  surrender  your 
individuality ;  let  God  be  all  in  all  to  you ; 
and  then,  —  so  such  lovers  of  religion  declare, 
—  you  will  indeed  win  the  peace  that  the 
world  can  neither  give  nor  take  away.  By 
such  a  flight  into  Egypt  the  defenders  of 
mystical  religion  hope  to  save  the  divine  life 
from  the  hands  of  the  Herod  of  modern  world- 
liness.  If  you  thus  flee,  they  say,  you 
may  find  what  the  saints  of  old  found  in  their 
deserts  and  their  cloisters.  Modern  civiliza- 
tion, with  all  its  restlessness,  will  then  become 
to  you,  so  the  partisans  of  mystical  religion 
insist,  a  matter  of  indifference.  Time,  with 
all  its  mysterious  futures  and  its  endless 
changes,  will  for  you  simply  pass  away. 

398 


MODERN     MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

You  will  behold  the  end  of  all  things.  You 
will,  so  to  speak,  witness  the  judgment  day. 
If  Christianity  is  to  triumph  at  all,  such  minds 
hold  that  it  must  triumph  in  the  form  of  the 
mystical  and  utterly  unworldly  piety  thus 
suggested.  Such  solutions  of  the  problem  of 
Christianity  are  at  this  moment  freely  offered 
for  our  need.  Such  solutions  in  plenty  will 
be  offered  in  the  future. 

Now  I  have,  personally,  a  profound  respect 
for  the  mystical  element  in  religion.  The 
problem  of  justly  estimating  that  element  is 
a  problem  as  inexhaustible  as  it  is  fascinating. 
And  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  mystics  have 
indeed  contributed  indispensable  religious 
values  to  our  experience.  I  am  eager  to 
bring  to  light,  in  our  future  discussion,  what 
some  of  those  values  are.  ,But  of  this  I  am 
sure :  Mystical  piety  can  never  either  exhaust 
or  express  the  whole  Christian  doctrine  of 
life.  For  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  in  its 
manifoldness,  in  the  intensity  and  variety 
of  the  human  interests  to  which  it  appeals, 
is  an  essentially  social  doctrine.  Private 

399 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

individual  devotion  can  never  justly  inter- 
pret it. 

Paul  was  a  mystic;  but  he  was  a  mystic 
with  a  community  to  furnish  the  garden  where 
the  mystical  flowers  grew;  and  where  the 
fruits  of  the  spirit  were  ripened,  and  where  all 
the  gifts  of  the  spirit  found  their  only  worthy 
expression. 

Without  his  community,  without  his  breth- 
ren to  be  edified,  and  without  charity  to  fur- 
nish the  highest  of  the  spiritual  gifts,  Paul, 
as  he  expressly  tells  us,  would  have  accounted 
all  his  other  gifts  as  making  him  but  as  sound- 
ing brass  and  as  a  tinkling  cymbal.  In  all 
this  he  displayed  that  sound  judgment,  that 
clear  common  sense,  to  which  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  has  always  been  true.  If 
Christianity,  in  the  future,  triumphs,  that 
will  be  because  some  active  and  beloved 
community  comes  gradually  more  and  more 
to  take  control  of  human  affairs,  and  not 
because  religion  has  fled  to  the  recesses  of  any 
wilderness  of  the  Godhead 

As  a  fact,  the  mystical  tendency  in  religion 

400 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

is  not  the  last,  the  mature,  result,  nor  yet  the 
last  refuge,  of  piety.  Mysticism  is  the  always 
young,  it  is  the  childlike,  it  is  the  essentially 
immature  aspect  of  the  deeper  religious  life. 
Its  ardor,  its  pathos,  its  illusions,  and  its 
genuine  illuminations  have  all  the  characters 
of  youth  about  them,  characters  beautiful 
but  capricious.  Mature  religion  of  the  Chris- 
tian type  takes,  and  must  take,  the  form  of 
loyalty,  —  the  loyalty  which  Paul  lived  out, 
and  described.  Loyalty  fulfils  the  individual, 
not  by  annulling  or  quenching  his  individual 
self-expression,  but  by  teaching  him  to  assert 
himself  through  an  active  and  creative  devo- 
tion to  his  community.  Hence,  while  one 
may  be  thoroughly  loyal,  and  therefore  thor- 
oughly religious,  without  having  the  gift  or 
the  grace  of  mystical  illumination,  no  mystic 
can  become  truly  religious  unless,  like  all  the 
really  greatest  of  the  mystics,  —  beyond  all 
his  illuminations,  and  besides  all  his  mere 
experiences  of  fulfilment,  or  of  the  immediate 
presence  of  the  Divine,  —  he  attains  to  a 
strenuous,  active  loyalty  which  can  overcome 

2D  401 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  world  only  by  living  in  the  community. 
The  strength  of  Christianity,  in  its  conflict 
with  the  future  world  of  our  changing  social 
order,  will  therefore  depend  upon  the  fact 
that  its  doctrine  of  life  permits  it,  and  indeed 
requires  it,  to  be  as  practical  and  constructive 
in  its  dealing  with  the  problems  of  social  life 
as  the  industrial  arts  are  practical  and  con- 
structive in  their  production  of  material 
goods.  It  is  the  Christian  will,  and  not  Chris- 
tian mysticism,  which  must  overcome  the 

world. 

VI 

If  many  thus  suppose  that  the  only  solution 
of  the  problem  of  Christianity  is  a  solution 
in  terms  of  inner  religious  experience,  and  if 
they  hold  that  the  modern  man  should  seek 
to  interpret  his  religion  mainly  or  wholly  in 
a  mystical  sense,  and  should  regard  Chris- 
tianity as  a  religion  of  private  individual 
illumination,  —  there  are  many  others  who 
indeed  vigorously  reject  this  view.  And  some 
such  defenders  of  the  faith  declare  that,  if 
Christianity  is  to  survive  at  all,  it  can  survive 

402 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

only  in  the  form  of  a  literal  acceptance  of  the 
principal  dogmas  of  the  historical  Church. 

Those  Christian  apologists  who  view  our 
problem  in  this  way  declare  that  the  modern 
man,  and  the  civilization  of  the  future,  must 
face  an  old  and  well-known  choice  between 
alternatives.  "Christianity,"  so  they  say, 
"declares  itself  to  be  a  revealed  religion. 
This  declaration  forms  a  part  of  its  very 
essence.  If  one  rejects  the  thesis  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  revelation  of  God's  will,  the  only 
alternative  is  to  view  Christian  doctrine  as  a 
mere  system  of  ethical  teachings,  and  thus 
to  transform  the  Christian  religion  into  bare 
morality.  The  future  of  Christianity  depends 
wholly  upon  how  this  choice  is  made." 

Our  previous  discussion  now  enables  us  to 
answer  this  frequent  assertion  of  the  apolo- 
gists of  Christian  tradition,  by  insisting  that, 
whatever  the  final  truth  about  Christianity 
may  be,  the  choice  between  alternatives  which 
lies  before  the  modern  man  is  not  justly  to  be 
stated  in  any  such  way  as  the  one  upon  which 
these  apologists  so  often  insist 

403 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

In  fact,  the  most  significant  choice  for  the 
modern  man,  in  dealing  with  Christianity, 
lies  between  accepting  and  rejecting  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  life.  And  the  Christian 
ideas  whereof  this  doctrine  of  life  consists 
can  be  both  estimated  and  put  into  practice 
without  presupposing  any  one  view  of  God  or 
of  revelation,  although  such  an  estimate  may 
indeed  lead,  in  the  end,  to  a  theology.  When 
stated  in  human  terms,  as  we  have  thus  far 
stated  them  in  these  lectures,  the  Christian 
ideas  do  not  constitute  merely  an  ethical 
system.  Nor  is  their  spirit  that  of  a  mere 
morality.  For  they  relate  to  the  salvation  of 
man.  That  is,  they  include  the  assertion  that 
human  life  ought  to  be  guided  in  the  light  of 
a  highest  good  which  is  not  a  merely  wordly 
or  natural  good,  and  which  cannot  be  obtained 
through  mere  skill  in  winning  good  fortune, 
or  in  successfully  living  the  life  of  a  human 
individual.  For  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life 
insists  that  the  human  individual,  as  he  is 
naturally  constituted,  simply  cannot  live  a 
successful  life,  but  must  first  be  transfigured. 

404 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

The  Christian  ideas  depend  upon  acknowl- 
edging what  we  have  called  the  distinction 
between  the  two  levels  of  human  existence, 
and  upon  defining  the  highest  good  of  man  in 
terms  of  a  transformation  of  our  individual 
nature.  A  loving  union  of  the  individual 
with  a  level  of  existence  which  is  essentially 
above  his  own  grade  of  being  is  what  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  life  defines  as  the  way  that 
leads  towards  the  highest  good.  The  whole 
of  Christianity,  as  we  have  seen,  grows  out 
of  this  doctrine  of  the  two  levels. 

But,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  the 
vista  which  this  doctrine  of  the  two  levels 
opens  before  us  is  at  once  human  and 
illimitable.  Man  the  individual  is  essentially 
insufficient  to  win  the  goal  of  his  own  exist- 
ence. Man  the  community  is  the  source  of 
salvation.  And  by  man  the  community  I 
mean,  not  the  collective  biological  entity 
called  the  human  race,  and  not  the  merely 
natural  community  which  gives  to  us,  as  social 
animals,  our  ordinary  moral  training.  Nor 
by  man  the  community  do  I  mean  the  se- 

405 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ries  of  misadventures  and  tragedies  whereof 
the  merely  external  history  of  what  is  called 
humanity  consists.  By  man  the  community 
I  mean  man  in  the  sense  in  which  Paul  con- 
ceived Christ's  beloved  and  universal  Church 
to  be  a  community,  —  man  viewed  as  one 
conscious  spiritual  whole  of  life.  And  I  say 
that  this  conscious  spiritual  community  is  the 
sole  possessor  of  the  means  of  grace,  and  is 
the  essential  source  of  the  salvation  of  the 
individual.  This,  in  general,  is  what  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  life  teaches.  The  essen- 
tial problem  for  the  modern  man  is  the  ques- 
tion :  Is  this  doctrine  of  life  true  ? 

Now  the  conception  of  man  the  spiritual 
community  comes  to  our  knowledge,  not, 
in  the  first  place,  by  means  of  any  revelation 
from  the  world  of  the  gods ;  nor  yet  through 
metaphysical  reflection ;  although,  when  once 
we  have  this  conception,  it  easily  suggests  to  us 
dogmas,  and  easily  seems  to  us  as  if  it  were 
a  superhuman  revelation,  and  also  awakens 
an  inexhaustible  metaphysical  interest. 

The  saving  idea  of  man  the  community 
406 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

comes  to  us  through  two  kinds  of  perfectly 
human  experience.  First,  it  comes  to  us 
through  the  experience  of  the  failure  both  of 
our  natural  self-will  and  of  our  mere  morality 
to  save  us.  This  failure  is  due  to  the  essential 
defect  of  the  level  upon  which,  by  nature, 
man  the  social  individual  lives.  Buddhism 
was  founded  upon  this  experience  of  the  inevi- 
table failure  of  the  human  individual  to  win 
his  own  goal.  Paul,  before  his  vision  of  the 
risen  Lord  converted  him,  learned  in  another 
form,  and  by  perfectly  human  experience,  the 
same  negative  lesson.  Individual  self-will 
is  due  to  our  insatiable  natural  greed,  and  is 
only  inflamed  by  our  merely  moral  cultivation. 
Secondly,  however,  when  such  experience 
of  the  failure  of  a  merely  individual  human 
existence  has  done  its  work,  another  sort  of 
experience  is  needed  to  reveal  to  us  the  mean- 
ing of  the  life  which  belongs  to  the  other 
human  level,  —  to  the  level  of  the  beloved 
community.  This  experience  is  the  experi- 
ence of  the  meaning  of  loyalty.  It  is  this 
experience  which,  while  always  essentially 

407 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

human  in  the  facts  that  it  brings  to  our  no- 
tice, opens  up  its  endless  vistas,  suggests  to  us 
countless  interpretations  in  terms  of  our  rela- 
tions to  a  supernatural  world,  and  justly  seems 
to  be  a  revelation  of  something  not  ourselves 
which  is  worthy  to  be  our  guide  and  salvation. 
This  experience  of  grace  and  of  loyalty  it  is 
which  awakens  an  inexhaustible  metaphysical 
interest. 

Since  these  ethical  and  religious  and  meta- 
physical vistas  and  interests  are  indeed  end- 
less, and  since  the  life  work  and  the  insight 
to  which  they  call  us  are  constantly  growing, 
there  is  no  one  way  of  defining  in  dogmatic 
formulas  that  view  of  God  or  of  revelation  to 
which  they  will  always  require  us  to  adhere. 
Man  the  community,  without  ceasing  to  be 
genuinely  human,  may  also  prove  to  be 
divine.  That  is  a  matter  for  further  inquiry. 
Loyalty,  without  ceasing  to  be  a  spirit  that 
we  learn  through  our  human  relations,  may 
also  prove  to  be  a  revelation  from  a  realm  of 
life  which  is  infinitely  superior  to  any  human 
life  that  we  now  experience.  In  other  words, 

408 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

the  higher  of  the  two  levels  of  human  exist- 
ence may  prove  to  be,  not  only  essentially 
above  our  individual  level,  but  endlessly 
and  quite  divinely  above  that  level.  Man 
the  community  may  prove  to  be  God,  as  the 
traditional  doctrine  of  Christ,  of  the  Spirit, 
and  of  the  Church  seems  to  imply.  But  all 
such  possible  outcomes  and  interpretations, 
to  which  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  may 
lead,  must  be  discovered  for  themselves.  It  is 
vain  to  narrow  the  choice  that  lies  before  the 
modern  man  and  before  the  future  social  order 
to  a  choice  between  any  one  set  of  traditional 
dogmas  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  mere  morality 
on  the  other. 

VII 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  life  is  therefore 
no  mere  morality,  any  more  than  it  is  a  mere 
mysticism.  And  yet  it  does  not  depend  upon 
first  accepting  any  one  form  of  theology  or 
any  one  view  about  revelation.  For  one  who 
wishes  to  judge  fairly  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life,  the  choice  which  is  to  be  faced  is  there- 

409 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

fore  this:  Either  a  doctrine  that  individuals 
can  work  out  their  own  salvation,  or  else  a 
recognition  that  salvation  comes  through 
loyalty  to  the  beloved  community  and  through 
the  influence  of  the  realm  of  grace.  Loyalty, 
-  the  beloved  community,  —  the  realm  of 
grace,  —  these  are  indeed  essential  features  of 
Christian  doctrine. 

The  various  views  about  revelation  which 
have  taken  part  in  Christian  history  can  be 
understood  only  in  case  this  contrast  between 
the  two  levels,  and  the  practical  significance 
of  grace,  of  salvation,  and  of  loyalty,  have 
first  been  made  clear  in  human  terms.  But 
if  these  human  aspects  of  the  Christian  ideas 
have  been  grasped,  one  may  then  go  on  to  the 
comprehension  of  what  the  Christian  views 
about  God  have  been  trying,  with  varied 
symbolism,  to  present  to  the  minds  of  men. 
One  who  approaches  the  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity with  the  lore  of  the  two  levels  of 
human  existence  well  in  mind  will  be  ready 
for  spiritual  novelties.  He  will  not  limit 
himself  to  any  simple  pair  of  alternatives. 

410 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

His  creed  will  be  neither  a  narrow  moralism 
nor  an  equally  narrow  traditional  dogmatism. 
He  will  perceive  that  we  have  endlessly  new 
things  yet  to  learn  about  what  were,  and 
still  are,  the  sources  of  Christian  doctrine 
and  life,  —  the  sources  of  the  inspirations 
which  guide  humanity  into  novel  undertak- 
ings, and  the  sources,  also,  of  those  traditions 
of  the  Church  which  symbolized  so  much  more 
then  they  made  explicit.  He  will  also  be  quite 
ready  to  see  that,  despite  all  the  changes  of 
doctrine,  the  unity  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  life  has  been  and  can  be  retained,  —  and 
retained  just  because  Christianity  is  a  doc- 
trine of  life,  and  hence  a  doctrine  of  that 
which  preserves  its  meaning  through  change, 
and  by  virtue  of  change,  so  that  the  doctrine 
also  must  change  its  form  as  the  life  changes, 
but  must  nevertheless  keep  its  unity  precisely 
in  so  far  as  the  changing  life  means  something 
coherent  and  worthy. 

And  therefore,  when  we  ask  how  the 
modern  man,  and  how  the  future  social  order, 
stands  related  to  the  Christian  ideas,  our 

411 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

question  really  concerns  the  worth  and  the 
coherence  which  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
life  still  retains,  and  will  retain,  in  the  midst 
of  our  vast  and  distracted  modern  world. 
Such  a  question  is  at  best  not  easy  to  answer. 
But  our  foregoing  studies  have  furnished  a 
preparation  for  an  attempt  towards  such  an 
answer.  I  believe  that  some  such  preparation 
is  needed,  and  will  grow  more  and  more  nec- 
essary the  tmore  complex  the  situation  of 
modern  civilization  becomes. 

VIII 

Closely  related  to  the  effort  to  reduce  our 
problem  of  Christianity  to  the  simple  choice 
of  alternative,  "Either  Christianity  is  a 
revealed  religion,  or  else  it  is  a  mere  system 
of  morality,"  there  stands  another  interpre- 
tation of  the  same  problem  with  which  you 
are  all  familiar.  This  interpretation  often 
expresses  itself  thus:  "The  modern  man's 
relation  to  a  Christian  creed  must  depend 
upon  his  answer  to  the  question,  "Is,  or  is 
not  the  man  Jesus,  the  founder  of  Christianity, 

412 


MODERN    MIND    AND     CHRISTIANITY 

identical  with  the  Christ,  the  God-Man, 
whom  Christian  tradition  has  acknowledged 
as  Lord  ? "  The  modern  man's  choice,  when 
thus  interpreted,  lies  between  the  two  alter- 
native theses  :  —  "Either  Jesus,  the  founder  of 
Christianity,  was  a  man,  and  only  a  man; 
or  else  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  that  is,  was  the 
God-Man." 

Many  apologists  insist  that  this  one  choice 
between  alternatives  may  be  said  to  cover  all 
that  is  most  important  in  the  problem  of 
Christianity.  For  if  the  modern  man,  in 
presence  of  this  choice,  decides  that  in  his 
opinion  Jesus  was  the  Christ,  the  decision 
brings  him  into  close  touch  with  all  the  best- 
known  traditions  of  historical  Christianity. 
The  Christian  religion  is  then  acknowledged 
to  be  a  divine  process ;  and  the  work  of  the 
divine  founder  becomes  the  one  source  of 
human  salvation.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
Jesus  was  a  man  and  only  a  man,  then,  how- 
ever exalted  his  human  life,  or  his  doctrine, 
may  have  been,  he  stands  upon  essentially  the 
same  level  as  Socrates  or  as  Confucius. 

413 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

For  in  that  case  he  taught  as  an  individual 
man,  addressing  his  individual  fellow-men ; 
and  the  worth  of  his  teaching  must  vary  with 
the  needs  of  persons  and  of  periods.  So  the 
problem  of  the  modern  man  is  stated  by  many 
Christian  apologists. 

As  a  fact,  the  choice  between  alternatives 
which  is  thus  formulated  can  be  neglected  by 
no  serious  student  of  our  problem  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  also  true,  however,  that  the 
choice  cannot  justly  be  made  unless  one  takes 
account  of  considerations  which  tend  greatly 
to  widen  our  vista,  and  which  define  possi- 
bilities whereof  those  who  believe  in  Christian 
tradition  seldom  take  adequate  account. 

In  answer,  then,  to  the  challenge:  "Either 
you  must  believe  that  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity was  only  a  man,  or  else  you  must 
accept  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  the  divine  man," 
—  we  must  first  reply,  I  think,  by  an  assertion 
which  is  as  capable  of  a  reasonable  historical 
confirmation  as  it  is  often,  at  the  present 
moment,  neglected.  It  is  indeed  no  new  as- 
sertion, and  many  in  the  past  have  made  it. 

414 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

But  our  foregoing  study,  I  think,  helps  us  to 
view  this  assertion  in  a  new  light. 

IX 

Whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  the 
person  of  Christ,  and  about  the  supposed 
supernatural  origin  of  Christianity,  the  human 
source  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life,  and 
also  the  human  source  of  all  the  later  Chris- 
tologies,  must  be  found  in  the  early  Christian 
community  itself.  The  Christian  religion,  in 
its  early  form,  is  the  work  and  expression  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

By  the  early  Christian  community  I  mean, 
first  of  all,  the  company  of  disciples  who, 
after  the  Master's  death,  assembled  in  Galilee, 
and  who,  a  little  later,  returned  to  Jerusalem. 
This  community  was  absorbed,  at  first,  in 
what  it  knew  of  the  earliest  visions  of  the 
risen  Lord ;  and  it  narrated  these  visions  in 
forms  which  the  well-known  gospel  legends 
preserved  for  later  Christian  ages.  This  com- 
munity also  cherished  the  memory  and  the 
reported  sayings  of  the  Master,  Erelong 

415 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

this  same  community  began  to  experience 
those  phenomena  of  collective  religious  fervor 
which  it  regarded  as  the  work  of  the  divine 
Spirit.  It  began  its  own  task  of  propagating 
its  faith.  It  made  converts.  Of  these  con- 
verts the  greatest  was  the  apostle  Paul.  Now 
this  community,  —  not  Paul  himself  as  an 
individual,  —  not  any  one  man,  but  this 
community,  acting  under  the  inspiration  of 
its  leaders,  —  is  the  source  of  all  later  forms 
of  Christian  life  and  faith.  In  this  sense  it  is 
true  that  this  community  is  the  real  human 
founder  of  Christianity. 

It  is  of  course  also  true  that  Jesus  during 
his  life  had,  as  an  individual  man,  taught  a 
doctrine,  and  done  a  work,  which  made  this 
first  Christian  community  possible.  In  this 
sense  it  is  correct  to  say  that  the  man  Jesus, 
in  so  far  as  he  was  merely  an  individual  man, 
is  the  founder  of  Christianity.  But  when  we 
say  this,  we  must  add  that,  so  far  as  we  know 
of  the  teachings  of  the  man  Jesus,  they  did 
not  make  explicit  what  proved  to  be  precisely 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  Christianity, 

416 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

—  namely,  the  mission  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  Christian  community  itself.  The  doc- 
trine of  Christian  love,  as  the  Master  taught 
it,  is  not  yet,  in  explicit  form,  the  whole 
Christian  doctrine  of  life.  For  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  is  a  doctrine  which  is  unintel- 
ligible apart  from  the  ideal  of  the  universal 
community. 

It  is  of  course  true,  that  had  it  not  been  for 
the  life  and  for  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  and 
had  not  the  visions  of  the  risen  Lord  been 
seen  and  held  in  memory,  there  would  have 
been  no  Christian  religion,  and  nothing  for 
Paul  to  discover  or  to  teach. 

But  it  is  also  true  that  Christianity  not  only 
is  a  religion  founded  upon  the  idea  of  the 
divine  community,  —  the  Church,  —  but  also 
is  a  religion  whose  human  founder  was  rather 
the  community  itself,  acting  as  a  spiritual 
unity,  —  than  it  was  any  individual  man 
whatever.  Our  doctrine  of  the  two  levels  of 
human  existence  has  explained  what  such  a 
view  of  the  matter  means. 

We  know  how  the  Church  interpreted  its 
2  a  417 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

own  origin  when  it  held  that  its  actual  origi- 
nator was  no  mere  individual  man  at  all. 
In  this  opinion  the  Church  was.  as  I  hold, 
literally  right,  however  you  interpret  the 
human  person  of  Jesus. 

The  modern  man,  therefore,  need  not  accept 
the  early  Christology  of  the  Church  in  order 
to  recognize  that,  since  the  founding  of  Chris- 
tianity was  due  to  the  united  spirit  of  the  early 
Christian  community,  this  founding  was  not 
wholly,  or  mainly,  due  to  any  individual  man 
whatever. 

Meanwhile,  since  the  human  founder  Jesus 
gave  the  stimulus,  the  signal,  —  or,  to  use 
the  now  current  Bergsonian  language,  set 
in  motion  the  vital  impetus,  without  which 
the  Christian  community,  as  this  potent  and 
creative  human  and  spiritual  union,  would 
never  have  come  into  existence,  —  we  can 
indeed  also  say  that  the  man  Jesus  was,  in 
this  sense,  the  founder  of  Christianity.  But 
we  cannot  say  that,  speaking  of  Jesus  as  an 
individual  man,  we  know  that  he  explicitly 
intended  to  found  the  Christian  Church.  For 

418 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

he  simply  did  not  make  explicit  what  he  taught 
about  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  as  a  divine 
community.  And  the  foundation  of  the 
Church,  as  a  community,  depends,  humanly 
speaking,  upon  psychological  motives  —  upon 
motives  belonging  not  merely  to  individual 
but  also  to  social  psychology  —  upon  motives 
which  we  cannot  fathom  by  means  of  any 
soundings  that  our  historical  materials  or  our 
knowledge  of  social  psychology  permit  us  to 
make.  We  shall  presumably  never  know  the 
true  sources  of  the  Easter  visions  until  we  have 
learned  the  whole  truth  about  that  second, 
that  higher,  level  of  human  existence  upon 
whose  reality  I  have  insisted.  The  psychology 
of  the  origins  of  Christian  experience  is  thus 
social,  and  is  not  an  individual  psychology. 

These  considerations  with  regard  to  Christian 
origins  teach  us  that,  deep  as  the  historical 
mystery  of  the  Christian  origins  remains, 
and  will  presumably  for  countless  ages  remain, 
neither  the  modern  man  of  to-day,  nor  the 
men  of  the  future,  can  be  limited  to  the 
simple  choice  which  the  apologists  emphasize. 

419 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 


But,  as  you  will  say,  What  bearing  have 
such  historical  comments  upon  the  future 
prospects  of  the  Christian  faith  ? 

I  answer:  These  considerations  tend  to 
show  us :  first,  that  the  Christian  ideas  do 
not  demand  for  their  interpretation  and 
appreciation  any  one  theory  regarding  the 
natural  or  supernatural  origin  of  this  religion; 
and  secondly,  that,  in  consequence,  these 
ideas  run  no  risk  of  being  neglected  or  forgotten 
in  consequence  of  the  inevitable  modern 
transformations  of  our  ideas  regarding  nature 
and  the  supernatural. 

Without  sinking  to  the  level  of  a  mere 
moralism,  Christianity  presents  to  us  a  view 
of  life  which  indeed  arouses  profound  meta- 
physical inquiries ;  but  which  yet  appeals 
to  the  most  concrete  and  vital  and  present 
moral  and  religious  interests.  And  without 
staking  its  existence  upon  the  truth  of  any 
legends,  Christianity,  when  fairly  interpreted, 
presents  to  us,  in  the  symbolism  of  its  Chris- 

420 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

tological  myths,  a  doctrine  which  is  capable 
of  the  most  manifold  religious  and  metaphys- 
ical interpretations,  but  which  also  expresses 
the  perfectly  human  and  the  verifiable  experi- 
ences that  the  loyal  life  everywhere  illustrates. 

We  have  seen  that  the  social  motives  to 
which  Christianity  appeals  are  rooted  in  the 
very  depths  of  our  nature.  They  are  the 
motives  which  make  us  naturally  dependent 
upon  life  in  communities,  and  morally  lost 
and  helpless  without  loyalty.  These  motives 
will  not  pass  away.  Christianity  was  that 
one  among  the  religions  which  first  invented 
an  effective  way  of  making  the  ideal  of  loyalty 
to  the  universal  community  not  only  impres- 
sive, but  so  transforming  that  for  centuries 
the  European  world  was  under  the  sway  of  the 
institutions  which  gave  expression  to  this  ideal. 

These  institutions  are  now  threatened ; 
and  the  historical  outcome  of  the  vast  con- 
flicts upon  which  they  are  now  entering 
cannot  be  foreseen.  Moreover,  in  order  to 
give  to  its  doctrine  of  life  not  only  a  social 
expression,  but  an  internal  consistency  and 

421 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

intensity  of  religious  meaning,  Christianity, 
in  its  early  days,  recorded  its  legends  and 
framed  its  creeds.  Many  of  the  resulting 
groups  of  ideas  already  seem  strangers  in  our 
modern  world ;  and  they  will  probably  seem 
to  future  generations,  -  -  as  time  goes  on,  - 
less  and  less  literally  acceptable.  But  now 
that  we  have  seen  something  of  what  momen- 
tous and  literally  true,  and  permanently 
needed,  spiritual  discoveries  concerning  hu- 
man life  and  its  salvation  the  symbolism  of 
these  legends  and  of  these  creeds  originally 
expressed,  we  are  able  to  judge  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  life  upon  its  own  immortal  merits, 
and  to  separate  this  judgment  from  any  one 
theory,  either  about  metaphysical  or  about 
historical  truth. 

Christianity  will  always  arouse  new  critical 
and  philosophical  inquiries ;  its  creeds  will 
probably  change  unceasingly ;  its  present 
institutions  may  in  time  wholly  pass  away. 
But  in  the  new  human  life  of  the  future  ages, 
love  and  loyalty  will  not  lose,  but  grow  in 
human  value,  so  long  as  man  remains  alive. 

422 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

And  the  calm  stern  conscience  wherewith 
the  Christian  faith  has  always  condemned 
both  our  natural  chaos  of  passion  and  our 
graver  disloyalties,  —  this  conscience  will  be 
increasingly  needed;  needed,  not  because 
men  fear,  but  because  men  grow  more  self- 
possessed  and  clear  in  vision.  The  more  rea- 
sonable, the  more  critical,  the  more  far-seeing, 
and  the  more  humane  men  become,  the  more 
will  the  ideas  of  the  moral  burden  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  irrevocable  guilt  of  dis- 
loyalty appeal,  not  to  the  morbid  moods,  but 
to  the  resolute  will  and  the  clear  self-con- 
sciousness of  the  enlightened  man  of  the 
future. 

Furthermore,  as  the  spirit  of  science  extends 
its  influence,  loyalty  to  the  common  insight 
and  to  the  growth  of  knowledge  will  become 
prominent  in  the  consciousness  of  the  civilized 
man.  For  the  scientific  spirit  is  indeed  one 
of  the  noblest  and  purest  forms  of  loyalty. 

The  Christian  virtues,  then,  will  flourish 
in  the  civilization  of  the  future,  if  indeed  that 
civilization  itself  flourishes.  For  the  more 

423 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

complex  its  constitution,  and  the  swifter  and 
vaster  its  social  changes,  the  more  will  that 
civilization  need  love,  and  loyalty,  and  the 
grace  of  spiritual  unity,  and  the  will  and  the 
conscience  which  the  Christian  ideas  have 
defined,  and  counselled,  and  that  atoning 
conflict  with  evil  wherein  the  noblest  expres- 
sion of  the  spirit  must  always  be  found. 

The  Christian  virtues  will  survive  if  hu- 
manity triumphs  in  its  contest  with  its  own 
deepest  needs  and  in  its  struggle  after  its 
own  highest  goods.  But  if  the  Christian 
virtues  survive,  they  will  find  their  religious 
expression.  And  this  expression  will  be  at- 
tended with  the  knowledge  that,  in  its  his- 
torical origins,  the  religion  of  the  future  will 
be  continuous  with  and  dependent  upon  the 
earliest  Christianity ;  so  that  the  whole 
growth  and  vitality  of  the  religion  of  the  future 
will  depend  upon  its  harmony  with  the  Chris- 
tian spirit.  Whatever  becomes  of  the  present 
creeds  and  the  present  institutions,  the  man 
of  the  future,  looking  out  over  the  wide  vista 
of  the  ages,  will  know  how  near  he  is,  despite 

424 


MODERN    MIND    AND    CHRISTIANITY 

all  time  and  change,  to  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

So  much,  and  only  so  much,  our  survey  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  permits  us  to 
assert  concerning  the  relation  of  the  Christian 
spirit  to  the  modern  mind,  without  essay- 
ing the  grave  tasks  of  a  philosophical  the- 
ory of  the  real  world.  Herewith  the  first 
part  of  our  task  is  done.  The  second  part 
calls  for  another  method. 


425 


HIE  following  pages  contain  advertisements 
of  Macmillan  books  by  the  same  author 


"THE   GOSPEL  OF   IDEALS" 

WILLIAM  JAMES 

and  Other  Essays  on  the 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

By  JOSIAH  ROYCE,  LL.D.,  Litt.D. 

Professor  of  the  History  of  Philosophy  at  Harvard  University. 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.50  net;  by  mail,  $1.60 

In  his  previous  works  the  author  set  forth  and  defended  a  form 
of  philosophical  Idealism.  The  essays  collected  in  the  present 
volume  contain  further  illustrations  and  applications  of  this  doc- 
trine. Each  essay  contains  an  interpretation  of  some  problem 
that  is  of  vital  interest  for  any  one  who  wants  to  form  sound 
ideals  for  the  conduct  of  life.  The  discourse  upon  William  James 
deals  with  some  of  his  ideals  and  incidentally  with  some  of  the 
author's  own.  The  address  upon  recent  discussions  of  the  prob- 
lems of  truth  explains  the  author's  attitude  in  relation  to  some  of 
the  positions  of  recent  pragmatism,  and  why  the  frequent  identi- 
fication of  the  idealistic  theory  of  truth  with  "barren  intellectual- 
ism  "  appears  erroneous. 

The  book  is  not  a  systematic  treatise,  and  is  to  be  considered 
solely  in  the  light  of  its  decidedly  practical  purpose  —  to  interpret 
some  problems  of  vital  interest  for  those  who  wish  to  form  sound 
ideals  for  the  conduct  of  life. 

"  The  Essays  are  full  of  interest  and  sympathy."  —  The  Continent. 

"  For  students  this  volume  will  have  abounding  interest,  and  serious 
readers,  even  if  not  technically  trained,  will  follow  the  discussions  with 
profit.  Professor  Royce  has,  with  Professor  James,  the  rare  gift  of  translat- 
ing the  thinking  of  the  scholar  into  the  language  of  the  plain  people."  — 
Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"  All  of  the  Essays  are  keen,  eloquent,  and  suggestive."  —  Boston  Herald. 


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"A  POWER  IN  THE  BUSINESS  OF  LIVING,"  says  the  New  York  Tribune  ot 

The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty 

By  JOSIAH  ROYCE,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University  ;  author  of 

"  Outlines  of  Psychology,"  "  The  Conception  of  God," 

"  The  World  and  the  Individual,"  etc. 

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"The  ethical  value  of  loyalty  needed  discussion,  especially  as  so 
much  so-called  loyalty  is  mere  self-delusion.  To  be  loyal  in  mere 
words,  or  negatively,  to  the  shell  of  an  outworn  convention  is  not  to  be 
loyal  at  all,  or  wise.  Moreover,  true  loyalty  must  express  itself  practi- 
cally, in  the  way  of  a  man's  life,  in  his  deeds.  Cherished  without  rea- 
soning, and  to  no  really  practical  purpose,  it  avails  nothing.  The  drift 
of  circumstances  that  may  make  a  man  of  high  and  strong  personal 
qualities  a  power  for  lasting  good  in  a  community,  or  develop  him  as  a 
harmful  influence  to  society,  does  not  escape  Professor  Royce's  attention. 
The  present  significance  of  his  book,  therefore,  is  evident.  .  .  .  The 
author  disclaims  the  idea  of  making  a  text-book  or  an  elaborately  tech- 
nical work  of  philosophical  research.  The  appeal  of  the  book  is  to  all 
readers." — New  York  Times. 

"  A  thoroughly  sincere  attempt  to  set  clearly  before  the  American 
people  the  need  for  aiming  at  the  highest  ethical  ideals  in  their  daily 
life,  in  their  intercourse  with  one  another,  and  in  their  relations  with 
the  outside  world.  Believing  that  certain  present-day  conditions  and 
tendencies  indicate  a  lowering  of  individual  and  national  standards, 
Professor  Royce  gives  himself  resolutely  to  the  task  of  remedial  and 
constructive  criticism.  His  programme  of  reform  is  summed  up  in  the 
single  phrase  —  the  cultivation  of  a  spirit  of  loyalty.  .  .  .  His  work  is 
immediately  and  concretely  inspiring  to  the  man  not  at  all  concerned 
with  the  subtleties  of  metaphysical  disquisition,  but  very  much  concerned 
in  the  affairs  of  every-day  existence.  It  helps  him  to  appreciate  the 
poverty  of  egotistical  ideals  —  such  as  the  ideal  of  power  —  and  it 
plainly  propounds  means  whereby  life  may  be  made  really  worth 
living."  —  The  Outlook. 

"  It  gives  beautiful  and  forceful  expression  to  ethical  idealism,  and 
grandly  fulfils  its  purpose  'to  simplify  men's  moral  issues,  to  clear  their 
vision  for  the  sight  of  the  eternal,  to  win  hearts  for  loyalty.'  .  .  .  There 
is  moral  enthusiasm  in  it,  there  is  patriotism  in  it,  there  is  love  of  hu- 
manity in  it.  It  comes  from  the  heart  of  a  man,  from  the  big  heart  of  a 
big  man,  from  a  fine  loyal  soul.  Fichte  never  spoke  with  greater  fer- 
vor and  eloquence  than  does  this  idealist  of  Cambridge,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  his  words  will  sink  deep  into  the  hearts  of  the  nation."  — 
DR.  FRANK  THILLY  in  The  Philosophical  Review. 


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"A  book  for  every  parent  a.nd  thinker" 

Outlines  of  Psychology 

AN    ELEMENTARY   TREATISE   WITH 
SOME    PRACTICAL   APPLICATIONS 

By  JOSIAH  ROYCE,    Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

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More  and  more  the  practice  is  growing  of  defining  a  good  many  of 
the  problems  of  practical  life  in  psychological  terms  so  far  as  they  are 
able  to  do  so ;  and  to  those  who  share  this  tendency,  Dr.  Royce's  book 
will  be  particularly  interesting. 

He  presupposes  a  serious  reader,  one  who  really  "  wants  to  know," 
but  not  one  trained  either  in  experimental  methods  or  in  philosophical 
inquiries.  He  tries  to  tell  such  a  reader  a  few  things  that  seem  to  him 
important,  about  the  most  fundamental  and  general  processes,  laws, 
and  conditions  of  mental  life. 

"It  is  not  a  'pedagogical  psychology,'  but  a  scientific  psychology, 
written  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  readily  accessible  to  teachers  a  deep 
and  true  knowledge  of  the  natures  which  they  seek  to  influence."  — 
Western  Journal  of  Education. 

"Obviously  a  treatise  upon  psychology  that  deals  with  the  subject 
with  this  broad,  free,  strong  handling  is  suggestive  and  constructive; 
helps  us  to  organize  our  ideas;  throws  out  new  light;  cannot  be  dis- 
regarded by  the  students  of  the  mind.  The  treatise,  however,  has  a 
special  value  in  practical  applications.  These  are  not  '  helps  to  the 
teacher,'  they  are  criticisms  upon  life  and  society  and  are  helps  to  the 
thinker  who  is  a  teacher."  —  W.  E.  CHANCELLOR  in  the  Journal  of 
Pedagogy. 

"The  reader  of  this  book,  who,  wishing  to  make  an  elementary 
study  of  the  inner  mind  of  the  world,  takes  Professor  Royce  for  his 
guide,  will  find  himself  increasingly  in  serious  companionship  with  a 
winsome  as  well  as  a  knowing  leader."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 


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Race  Questions,  Provincialism,  and  Other 
American  Problems 

By  JOSIAH  ROYCE 

Professor  of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University;  author 
of  "  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  etc. 

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"This  volume  makes  a  plain  and  important  appeal  to  any 
intelligent  man  or  woman,  and  should  be  read  by  many."  —  The 
Nation. 

"  The  point  of  view  and  discussion  are  original  and  refreshing." 
—  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"  A  book  of  original  thought."  —  Argonaut. 

"  These  essays  are  fearless  and  profound  studies  of  our  Ameri- 
can civilization."  —  Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

"  It  should  appeal  to  any  person  who  has  the  least  bit  of  inter- 
est in  his  country,  as  it  reveals  a  wider  field  of  vision  than  many 
enjoy,  every  page  opening  a  vista  of  life." — Boston  Globe. 


OTHER  WORKS  BT  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

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